The Lives of Others
by NotesfromaClassroom
Summary: Observing is more than seeing...or so Sherlock claims. Yet the people in his life deserve more observation than he gives them. Each chapter is centered around one of the "regular irregulars" who inhabit the world of Joan and Sherlock. More character-driven than mystery, though there's some of that, too.
1. Ms Hudson

**The Lives of Others**

**Chapter One: Ms. Hudson**

**Disclaimer: Just playing! **

"I am a part of all that I have met."

Sitting crossed armed, slightly hunched over, Sherlock waits for someone to call him out for being a liar. The other addicts in the church basement hardly stir. Not fans of Tennyson, perhaps. British Victorian poetry _is_ studied in the United States—Sherlock has had more than one occasion to quiz Watson on a line from Hardy or Arnold. And every winter some amateur theatrical troupe in the city performs what must be an abominable adaptation of Dickens' _A Christmas Carol_.

He sits up. "It's a quotation from Tennyson's 'Ulysses,' you see. A commentary about being connected to those around us. Changed by our experiences."

Again he waits for someone to point out the contradiction in what he said not two minutes earlier, something he's said more than once, that he is _without peer_. That he lives his life from a place of lonely regard, like someone watching others without feeling a need to join in. The consummate observer.

"I realize," Sherlock says, his gaze focused on the middle distance, "that being without peer does not, as you might think, suggest a lack of relationships on my part. My life is full of encounters with other people, mostly through my work, but increasingly in other parts of my life as well. My co-workers are important to me. They are, for all intents and purposes, my friends. And my—partner—knows who I am as well as anyone."

He lowers his gaze and adds, "Being understood is superior, in my opinion, to being loved. We very often love people without truly understanding them, or our love gets in the way of seeing them as they are. But to be _understood_—truly _seen_—is a rare gift indeed."

Now some of the other people in the room do stir—a gentle rustle of legs uncrossing and chairs creaking. From the corner of his eye Sherlock sees an older woman nodding. So. His observations are shared, an oddly gratifying revelation.

Nevertheless, when the meeting ends a few minutes later, Sherlock makes a point of slipping out without exchanging any words with anyone. Head down, his hands in his pockets, he walks two blocks to the subway station. Under his feet he feels the seismic tremor of a train—the northbound #3, two minutes behind schedule. Hurrying down the steps and through the turnstile, he hears the characteristic screech of the #2 southbound train, the bent lip of the rail in this station making the braking louder than normal.

The train is already crowded and for a moment Sherlock hesitates, weighing the odds of the next one being less occupied. Most of the passengers are well-heeled business men in suits and ties and women in formal trousers and jackets. For the next hour the trains will be full of such people going home from work. With a sigh, Sherlock pushes his way into the car and grabs a pole as the train jerks forward a moment later.

It isn't true, of course, that he's a part of everyone he's met. This crowd here on the train, for instance—including the pickpocket even now eyeing the purse of the woman standing next to him, an undocumented day laborer holding a brown bag of day-old bread, three chatting bankers whose mutual dislike is obvious, a teenager with tattoos of stars on his neck, a nanny pushing a pram—Sherlock observes them and then dismisses them as they disappear at the various stations. By the time he exits at the Clark Street station in Brooklyn, all of the original passengers have been replaced by new travelers. A metaphor, certainly, for the people who enter and leave his life.

Not all of them, of course. Not Watson.

As soon as he opens the front door of the brownstone he knows that she is cooking, something she does rarely and with reluctance, protesting that she is not very skilled. Nonsense, of course. Her cooking is more than adequate. Soup, chili, sandwiches of all sorts. Pasta. Once she made brownies that they consumed in a single sitting.

"Oh, hey," she says when he wanders into the kitchen. "Spaghetti'll be ready in a few minutes."

Sherlock nods and picks up a rectangular piece of paper from the table.

_bleach _

_wood polish_

_mop_

Ms. Hudson's handwriting. Watson sees the list in his hand and says, "Ms. Hudson said we needed a few things. I can pick them up when I get groceries tomorrow."

The list is a mystery. Yesterday there was a full bottle of bleach in the pantry, and a week ago he bought wood polish. And the mop is also fairly new.

"You saw her today?"

"Uh huh," Watson says, stirring a pot on the stove. "She left about an hour ago. Why?"

"How did she seem? Was she upset? Distraught in any way? More talkative than usual? Or less?"

"What's this about?"

"This list," Sherlock says, replacing it on the table. "Ms. Hudson is going through our cleaning supplies more quickly than is ordinary, which suggests she is distracted by something."

Watson puts down the spoon and turns to look at him. "Or maybe the basement is adding more work. I hadn't thought about that. We need to pay her more—"

"Nothing in the basement requires wood polish or bleach," Sherlock says. "This savors of something else."

Watson lifts the pot from the stove. With a start, Sherlock realizes that she is waiting for him to put the colander in the sink so she can drain the noodles.

"You know," Watson says, picking up a fork and placing noodles on a plate, "now that you mention it, she did look a little…well, upset. Or something. I should have asked her about it."

"You were granting her her privacy," Sherlock says swiftly. "Though if I'm not mistaken, we may have an opportunity to express our concern now."

"What are you—"

"Ms. Hudson!" Sherlock shouts. "We're down here!"

Footsteps on the stairs, and then Ms. Hudson appears in the doorway. "I didn't mean to disturb you, but I seem to have misplaced my wallet. I thought I'd check here before I started canceling my credit cards."

"I'll help you look," Watson says, rising. Sherlock feels her eyes slide toward him, a prompt.

"Yes, well, Watson and I were just talking about this," he says, picking up the list. "An inexplicable overuse of supplies, and now your wallet goes missing. Not your temperament. Do you wish to tell us what is going on?"

Ms. Hudson's eyes widen and she sniffs. Twice.

"Why don't you sit down?" Watson says. Ms. Hudson pulls out the chair at the end of the table and settles in it carefully. Sherlock and Watson sit back down.

"I'm interrupting your dinner," Ms. Hudson says, motioning to their plates. "It's probably nothing anyway."

"On the other hand, if you wish to tell us—" Sherlock says. Ms. Hudson takes a deep breath and appears to be considering something. At last she lets out her breath and says, "You're right, of course. I don't know why I thought you wouldn't notice. It's my brother. I'm worried about him."

Sherlock sees Watson react. "I didn't know you had a brother," she says.

"Oh, yes," Ms. Hudson says. "We haven't been close since….well, in a long time. But we'd send birthday cards, that sort of thing. His wife used to write letters, but then they split when he went into rehab."

"Your brother is an addict?" Sherlock says.

"He's had a drinking problem since we were teenagers. He said it was under control, but then he lost his job and things fell apart. I'm not even sure where he is right now."

"Do you have other family?" Watson says half a beat before Sherlock thinks to ask. Other family might know where her brother is, or at the very least, might know how to find him. Surely Ms. Hudson would have already explored that idea if she had family.

"She does not," Sherlock says before Ms. Hudson can answer. Watson gives him an impenetrable look—something vaguely disapproving though he can't imagine why.

"Do you want us to find him? Your brother?" Watson says.

To his astonishment, Ms. Hudson bursts into tears. Watson is instantly on her feet, an arm thrown around Ms. Hudson's shoulders.

"It's probably nothing," she says, snuffling into her palm. "But until I know—"

It's not the sort of missing person case Sherlock relishes—nothing convoluted or layered, just a user who's temporarily fallen off the radar. The police are more than up to the task. He opens his mouth to say so.

"Tell us everything you know about his last whereabouts," Watson says. "We'll see what we can do."

Now it's Sherlock's turn to give Watson a look, but she turns away—deliberately—so that she isn't looking at him directly.

_I am a part of all that I have met._ Truer some days than others. He slides his plate of spaghetti to Ms. Hudson.

"Here," he says, darting a glance at Watson. "Go ahead and eat something before you start. This may take awhile."

X X

She's almost home when she realizes that her wallet isn't in her purse. Nor is it in the floor of the taxi, nor the seat, nor in her coat pocket. Her heart thumping wildly, Ms. Hudson leans up to the smeared clear plastic partition in the cab and says, "Houston, we have a problem."

The joke is lost on the cabbie who's been listening the entire ride to Spanish talk radio. "Eh?"

"I have to run in to get some money," Ms. Hudson says, motioning to the high-rise apartment on the corner. "Look, I'm sorry, but I think I let my wallet inside. Here, I'm leaving my purse with you as collateral."

She shoves her purse—Prada, worth the price of a dozen taxi rides—through the opening in the plastic. The cabbie, alarmed now, says, "No! You pay! No!"

"I'll be right back!" She steps out of the cab on the street side—a terrific sin—and pats the hood as she dashes around the front. "Right back!" she calls again.

The daytime doorman sees her coming and has the door open as she dashes through. "Tell that cabbie not to leave!" she says as she runs to the elevator. A miracle—it's in the lobby already, something that almost never happens.

Of course her wallet isn't in the apartment—she knew that the moment she realized that it was missing. But she has emergency cash in a jewelry box—several hundred dollars for just this kind of situation—and in two more minutes she is back in the cab explaining to the cabbie—mollified by a sizeable tip—that she needs to go back where he picked her up.

"All the way to Brooklyn?"

"Yes, I know, but I forgot something. Please hurry."

It's her own fault, of course, her mind a million miles away. She's never had trouble focusing before—not even when her mother was dying from breast cancer and Ms. Hudson had lost her sales job in an upscale women's clothing boutique in Chelsea. Back when she was known as Brandon, before she took Hudson as her name—borrowing intentionally from the river she paid dearly to see from her bedroom window. Back before she'd finally, irrevocably decided to transition to who she always knew she was.

Back when Daniel was still talking to her.

They'd grown up across the Hudson in Jersey City, moving across the river to New York after high school to share a one room walk-up with a cat to keep the roaches and rats at bay. Daniel was two years younger, the more adventurous of the brothers, always moving to a new girlfriend, a new job.

For awhile they both worked at the same Indian restaurant. That's when Ms. Hudson met the owner's son Amit, the most beautiful man she'd ever seen, and had fallen madly, deeply in love for the first time. She said nothing, unsure how to explain to anyone, not even to herself, what she should do.

When she confided in Daniel he was at first confused and then dismissive and finally angry. So she stopped telling him what she was doing—going to support meetings, finding a therapist, deciding on hormone therapy and surgery. Learning to walk all over again. Taking voice lessons. Discovering the multiple sleights levied against women. Throwing herself into learning ancient Greek. Joining an online forum for chess masters. Indulging her OCD by organizing the research a dissertation student at Columbia had cobbled together—and parlaying that job into others like it, making enough money to survive but not enough to live well until a friend in London put her in contact with Sherlock.

He needed a researcher, he said, someone who was careful to a fault, who didn't mind following a rabbit trail through cumbersome records to come up with the kinds of details that seemed, on the surface, trivial or unimportant but which he assured her were essential. It wasn't often, but when she heard from him he paid her enough to carry her forward several comfortable months.

And then she met Davis—and began the on-again off-again whirlwind that became their life together. By then she'd had several other lovers, men who appreciated her intelligence as much as they found her history intriguing—but no one doted on her the way Davis did, helping her move to an apartment with a better view, giving her a clothing allowance that was more than she had made waiting tables her first year in New York.

"I think it's fair to expect more than that from a relationship," Joan had said that night they were snowed in at the brownstone. And it was true. She did deserve more.

Giving up Davis had sent her into a spiral of unresolved grief for her mother, her brother. She reached out to Daniel and his wife, Molly, invited her to visit their home in Queens.

Molly was lovely—warm and welcoming, giving Ms. Hudson a hug as soon as she met her.

Daniel was more cautious—which her therapist had warned about.

"After all," the therapist said, "he remembers you very differently. From his point of view, he's lost a brother."

Ms. Hudson had bristled at that. Daniel hadn't lost anything. In fact, he'd gained a sibling who was finally comfortable in her own skin. Surely that ought to count for something.

The evening had been strained and awkward but cordial enough, and after that Ms. Hudson made a point of sending cards and staying in touch.

Until Molly called and said Daniel was in rehab, something he should have done long ago.

"I wanted to tell you goodbye," Molly said, something in her voice signaling more than she was saying.

"You're leaving him," Ms. Hudson said, and on the other end of the line Molly gave a strangled hiccup and said, "I have to."

That was two months ago and since then Ms. Hudson has tried to find Daniel. The rehab center will tell her nothing more than his discharge date was weeks ago. His phone is disconnected. His apartment is empty. When she passes homeless men in the park, she pauses to see if she recognizes her brother.

She could ask Sherlock to help, of course, though she's embarrassed to have to confess to him that addiction is driving her brother's behavior. Is it triggering to ask an addict to search for another one? At some level she knows that part of her reluctance is admitting that she and her brother are estranged. Even now she can't believe that children who spent so many happy hours playing ball and riding bikes could end up hardly speaking as adults.

The cab pulls up to the sidewalk and she debates whether or not to tell him to wait. Surely her wallet is somewhere stupid and obvious and she can dart in and out in a minute or two. On the other hand, she's already spent enough on cabs today. She'll take the train back home.

When she unlocks the door she pauses long enough to listen for voices, half hoping that no one is home.

"Ms. Hudson!"

Well, there's no remedy now. She'll have to own up to being forgetful. Hopefully with two detectives in the house, her wallet will turn up in short order.

X X X

Finding Daniel takes less than two hours.

Joan makes a phone call to a social worker friend who works at a clinic near the rehab center and describes him. The social worker isn't sure but Daniel sounds familiar. She gives Joan the number of a men's shelter nearby, and when she calls, the director IDs Daniel right away.

"Want to come?" Joan asks Sherlock. He's busy with some sort of chemical test, using litmus paper to separate elements suspended in various fluids. She expects him to turn her down and is pleasantly surprised when he lifts his coat from the hook and follows her outside. Joan heads toward the subway stop but Sherlock hails a passing cab.

"What exactly do you hope to achieve?" he says, settling into the seat beside her. "If Daniel even agrees to talk to us."

Sherlock's question catches her off-guard and she realizes she hasn't actually considered what she should tell him. That his sister is concerned? That she's trying to get in touch? That she's offering him a place to stay?

All true, of course, but from what Ms. Hudson has told them, Daniel isn't likely to be very receptive.

"I guess," Joan says, "it depends on what we find. If he's okay—if he's not abusing—then we just need to see if he's safe. That he has a place to stay and a way to support himself."

"And if we don't find that?"

"Then we'll try to convince him to return to rehab. Or at least to contact his sister. She needs to know what he's doing, no matter what it is."

Sherlock stares outside at the passing traffic. "The odds are against us. I know from experience that no one is as convincing as oneself when it comes to getting the sort of help he needs. He isn't likely to listen to strangers at any rate. If this doesn't prove to be a fool's errand, then I'll be quite surprised."

Joan feels a prickle of annoyance. "Then why'd you agree to come?"

"I considered not doing so," Sherlock says. "But I was…concerned…that Ms. Hudson's brother might be difficult."

It's as close as he can come to admitting feeling protective of her. Sherlock pulls out his phone and busies himself with it.

"Thanks," Joan says. "You're probably right."

The visit with Daniel is faster than the crosstown trip to the shelter. Sherlock picks him out of the group of men watching a football game on TV in a large room at the front of the shelter and heads to him immediately.

"Daniel? My name is Sherlock Holmes. Might I have a word with you?"

From her vantage point, Joan sees Daniel shrug. "Go ahead," he says.

Sherlock motions to Joan who comes forward and stands beside him. "This is Joan Watson. She and I are consulting detectives with the New York Police Department, though we are not here in that capacity."

"Then why are you here?" Daniel says, a note of irritation in his voice. Joan feels Sherlock flinch slightly and she steps closer to Daniel.

"Actually, we're here because your sister is worried about you. She knew you went into rehab but she hasn't been able to find you since then."

Daniel snorts and says, "I don't have a sister."

"She needs to know that you are okay," Joan says.

"Then you tell her, or him, or whatever, that I don't any help. Now, do you mind? The Ravens are playing."

Joan sighs. She isn't surprised, but she is disappointed. She turns to go.

"Your confusion is understandable," Sherlock says, stepping between Daniel and the TV. "You were children together, playmates, companions. And now the person you thought you knew turns out to have been a phantom all along. Even trained observers have trouble seeing those nearest. Lovers. Siblings. We think we understand them better than we do. You are very fortunate, though. Your sibling is close at hand. You still have a chance to get to know her. She's not just the person you knew once—she's more."

He rocks slowly on the balls of his feet, almost like someone in a fighting stance.

Which, Joan thinks, he might be. Daniel's face flushes.

"Beat it," he says. "And if you don't, I'll call the cops."

X X X X

They ride back to the brownstone in silence.

"You want me to call her?" Joan says as they exit the cab. "I don't mind."

"Not necessary," Sherlock says. "The brass kickplate on the door has been polished since we left. She's waiting for us inside."

The door opens as Sherlock takes out his key.

"I hope you don't mind," Ms. Hudson says. "I felt too anxious waiting at home."

"We spoke to him," Joan says. "He's at the men's shelter I told you about."

"Is he okay? Did he say anything about me?"

Joan feels Sherlock's eyes on her.

"He did not appear to be impaired in any way," Sherlock says. "The shelter undoubtedly has rules about alcohol which will help him maintain his sobriety."

"Then you think it's a good place for him? A good situation?"

"We told him you were concerned. He said to reassure you that he is well."

Ms. Hudson visibly relaxes. "I'm so relieved," she says. "Thank you so much for finding him and checking on him. Do you think I can see him?"

"It might be best," Sherlock says, "if you give him more time. Seeing you—letting you see him in this state—will embarrass him. He knows he's let you down."

Ms. Hudson's eyes grow misty and she wipes the back of her hand across her cheek.

"I understand," she says. From the side table she picks up her purse and sweater. "I'm heading home, then. With my wallet, too."

When the door latches behind her Joan swivels around and faces Sherlock.

"You lied."

"I gave her a version of the truth."

She opens her mouth to argue.

On the other hand, who's to say Sherlock didn't see past the actual words to something more elemental?

"I guess," Joan says, "if it can be true for one person, it might turn out to be true for someone else."

Sherlock cuts his eyes at her but says nothing. Suddenly she's very tired—a hot bath and an early bedtime sound appealing.

"I'm heading up," she says. "Unless you need me to sit with you."

Sherlock throws his shoulders back the way he does when he wants to communicate emphatic disagreement.

"I require no such attention," he says. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," she says, heading up the steps. She's almost sorry she didn't just tell him she was staying up awhile longer, keeping him company whether he wants it or not.

This is how it will always be, she thinks, living in the presence of ghosts, stumbling over the unspoken, unexamined questions around the edge of their relationship.

"You understand me better than anyone," he told her when she insisted he could not have killed Maria Gutierrez. His voice was raised, his chin tipped up in high emotion, his attempt to refute what she knew was bedrock true. But she had not faltered for a moment, and later when she recalled his words she understood something else, too, that nothing and no one anchors him as she does.

**A/N: I've been away writing original fiction and playing in the **_**Star Trek**_** fandom, but the **_**Elementary **_**Muse whispered in my ear today and I had to take dictation. Thanks for jumping along for what I hope will be a fun ride as we hear from some other regular irregulars.**


	2. Teddy

**Chapter Two: Teddy**

**Disclaimer: Fun and games only.**

"Joan Watson?"

A woman wearing an ill-fitting suit stands on the top step of the brownstone stoop, a clipboard in her hand. From the open doorway, Joan notes the woman's sensible shoes, her lack of make-up, her tired demeanor. The only thing stylish is her hair—tight curls pulled back with a headband.

The clipboard suggests she's not here as a potential client. A pollster? Possible, though something about that conclusion feels off. Joan opens the door wider.

"Yes. Can I help you?"

"I'm LaWanda Stewart from the Truancy Task Force. Your son was identified by the New York City Department of Education as a student with chronic attendance issues. Can I come in?"

"I'm sorry," Joan says. "You have the wrong information. I don't have a son."

"You _are_ Joan Watson?"

'Yes, but—"

"My records show that you are the mother of Teddy Thompson, a freshman at Bushwick Community High School."

"No, I don't have a—wait. Did you say Teddy Thompson?"

"You enrolled him at Bushwick on September 3rd of last year. Here's your signature." LaWanda Stewart angles the clipboard toward Joan.

"There's been a mistake, but come in. We need to sort this out." Joan steps back and LaWanda Stewart follows her. Motioning to her to sit on the sofa, Joan perches on the chair opposite and leans forward.

"I know Teddy Thompson, but I assure you, he's not my son."

"According to my records he is."

For the first time Joan begins to feel annoyed. The bureaucratic mindset on display—LaWanda Stewart unable or unwilling to bend.

"You said he has attendance issues. Is he in trouble?"

LaWanda Stewart purses her lips and nods. "He was absent 17 days in the first semester alone, but since the winter break, he's been out 30 of the last 45 days. Ms. Watson, research shows that children who miss more than 20 days of school are at serious risk of dropping out."

"Yes," Joan says, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice, "I know all that. I agree. Teddy needs to be in school."

"If there's a health issue we need to address—"

"I'm not sure, but I don't think there is."

LaWanda Stewart's expression goes sour. "You don't know?" She sets her clipboard on her lap with too much emphasis and says, "I see."

Suddenly patience seems less of a virtue. Joan stands up and, a beat later, LaWanda Stewart does, too.

"Ms. Watson, you have a legal responsibility to make sure your son gets to school. My responsibility is to remind you of that. If you need any help, you can call one of the numbers here."

She thrusts a folded flier at Joan and lets herself out the front door.

In the kitchen, Sherlock is on his knees wiping out the refrigerator, bottles and plastic containers of leftovers in a semi-circle on the floor around him. He glances up briefly as Joan enters and sits at the table.

"We had company," Sherlock says.

"The truant officer. Did you know that Teddy's telling people I'm his mother? Or at least that's what he told the officials at his school. Gave them this address as his home."

"Teddy the former pickpocket-slash-street urchin who lives with his adult sister and her two toddlers? That Teddy?"

"He hasn't been going to school, apparently. I hope something hasn't happened to him."

Straightening, Sherlock says, "Shouldn't be difficult to find out. We know his actual address. A visit to his sister would resolve the matter."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to call Teddy? Or text him? Don't you have his phone number?"

"In point of fact," Sherlock says, pulling his phone from his pocket and thumbing the screen, "I have not been in communication with Teddy in some time. The last time we spoke was—" He squints at his phone. "…May 24th, right before I left for London. He asked if I had some work he might do to earn money to buy birthday gifts for his twin nephews."

"I remember that," Joan says. "Didn't you have him counting the number of unlicensed cabs versus licensed ones trolling for fares near the Brooklyn Bridge Park? The licensed guys were being put out of business but the taxi commission insisted the infractions were too few to investigate. Didn't Teddy figure out that the licensed guys were right? That the ratio of unlicensed cabs to the legit ones was incredibly high?"

"1.75 to 1, in fact. If the cabbies of New York ever _do_ actually hire me, I can produce the data. Teddy's gathering it was a completely spurious task, of course," Sherlock says, "designed to give him practice in algebraic equations. It _was_ interesting, however, to see how many wildcat taxis operate in the area. I seriously underestimated the number."

Sherlock's eyes are on his phone but Joan sees him dart a look at her before turning away.

"So," she says, grinning, "you admit that you threw Teddy a bone out of the goodness of your heart."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Sherlock says. "Although most higher maths are not essential to the ordinary person, a rudimentary knowledge of algebra is helpful. I was merely offering Teddy an opportunity to make a practical application of an abstraction. That he was also paid is incidental." He puts the phone to his ear and tips his head to the side, obviously listening. In a moment he pulls the phone away and shakes his head.

"No answer," he says. "A trip to Bushwick might be in order after all."

X

Leaving Sherlock to finish cleaning, Joan takes the B38 bus to the Bushwick Avenue stop and walks the rest of the way to the yellow brick walk-up where Teddy's sister Sharlaine lives. As much to Joan's surprise as to her relief, Sharlaine is home, inviting Joan in with a weariness that speaks of small children and long hours at work. Short and with dark features that remind Joan of Teddy, Sharlaine picks up a stack of papers from one end of a couch.

"I really don't know why you came," she says. "I don't know where he is half the time."

"Have you see Teddy today?" Joan says. From another room comes the sound of children laughing, then a bump and a scuff and a piercing wail.

"Just a minute," Sharlaine says, walking out. Idly Joan listens as Sharlaine scolds and comforts in equal measure what must be her two sons, the nephews Teddy told Sherlock he wanted to buy birthday gifts for. When she comes back, Sharlaine has a tattered bookbag in her hand.

"I can tell when he's at school," she says, handing the bookbag to Joan. "He takes this with him. See, there's some of his school books in there. Sometimes we go for days without crossing paths. He comes home after I'm in bed and I leave the next morning before he does." She glances up as if expecting Joan to say something. "I make him get up for school, but after I leave for work, I don't know what he does. You try to make a teenager do something, see how far you get."

"Teddy's what—14?" Joan pulls out one of the textbooks from the bookbag and flips through it. A physics book, and from the looks of it, extensive. Nothing watered down about it. She pulls out another, a chemistry book. It, too, looks challenging.

"Turned 15 last month," Sharlaine says. "I warned him about the truant officers. I knew they'd come looking for him."

"Does he have friends? Do you know where he hangs out?"

Again Sharlaine frowns. She shakes her head and says, "Look, I know you are trying to be helpful, but Teddy has a mind of his own. If he's in trouble, it's because he's making bad choices for himself. He's almost an adult. He has to be responsible sometime."

Before she can stop herself, Joan blurts out, "He's barely 15. That's still a kid!"

Sharlaine crosses her arms. "That might be true in _your_ world," she says, the weight of what she doesn't say filling up the space between them. "But all Teddy's got is me."

Mary Watson wasn't exactly a Tiger Mom, but she was close. Music lessons, dance classes, a tutor when Joan's calculus grade started to slip, trips to Europe when she and Oren were kids—all orchestrated by a mother who wouldn't take no for an answer. Still, at 15 Joan had been free to make the kinds of mistakes that kids make—an ill-advised summer romance, a stint of cigarette smoking on the sly.

"I don't mean to pry," Joan says. "But if I can help—"

Sharlaine's expression softens. "I'll talk to him. I'll tell him that the school people were around to your place. That's all I can do, you know? It's really up to him."

X X

Teddy sees Joan Watson as soon as he rounds the corner. She's standing at the intersection near his apartment, one hand in the air to hail a cab. Stepping back and letting the crowd part around him, Teddy makes sure she doesn't see him. He isn't positive she would make a scene, but she _might_—and he doesn't need his boys, Lavar and Jess, to see that. Not when they're already pressing him to help again with the scamming.

"We were lucky it was Holmes caught us. Anybody else woulda turned us in." He's said this so often to his boys that they roll their eyes when he starts. So far it's all good, but one day Teddy knows they will decide they've had enough and they'll walk away. Then where will he be?

It's all Holmes' fault, too. What good is a pickpocket with a conscience? Or if not a conscience, exactly—because those cats he used to lift from had plenty to spare and probably never missed anything he took—then a healthy respect for the law. Or a fear of it. Or of Holmes. Because he'd find out if Teddy started scamming with his boys again. Somehow he'd know.

Joan Watson lets a gypsy cab pass by and waits for a licensed yellow cab to pull to the curb. As soon as it pulls back into traffic, Teddy gives a sigh of relief. Lavar punches him in the shoulder.

"What's that for?" Teddy says, ducking out of the way as Lavar fakes with his left. Jess joins in, giving Teddy's head a slap too hard to go unremarked on. "Hey, man, lighten up!"

Their hijinks catch the attention of a doorman standing outside one of the recently renovated apartment buildings facing the avenue. Lots of young couples have moved in recently—increasingly Teddy has to dodge their baby carriages on the sidewalk—and the doorman is a new addition. Gentrification. Teddy's heard his sister complaining that the rent will rise now that the hipsters are moving in.

"Hey, you kids! Stop horsing around!" the doorman calls out. Lavar and Jess shrug and hurry on, but Teddy plants his feet and puts his hands on his hips.

"Ain't none of your business what we do!"

"Beat it," the doorman says in an almost normal tone of voice this time, which Teddy accepts as a victory of sorts.

He considers passing his sister's house and crashing at Lavar's place tonight, but Sharlaine is waiting for him on the steps, Tyler and LJ playing at her feet with a dusty set of Legos.

"'Bout time you came home," she says as he walks up. "I need to talk to you."

"I already saw her. Ms. Watson was here."

"Why'd you tell the school you lived with her? You ashamed of me?"

Scuffing one toe on the sidewalk, Teddy shakes his head. "I didn't want them bugging you if something came up."

"Oh, something came up alright," Sharlaine says loudly. "You're gonna fail if you don't start going to school."

"I go. Just lately I had that cold and I stayed home."

Sharlaine snorts in disbelief. "You look fine to me now. What you been doing instead of going? Hustling in the park, I reckon."

"No, I ain't. I told you I quit after Holmes turned me loose."

"You don't go to school, you don't graduate. You don't graduate, you don't get a job. What you gonna do then? Go back to stealing in the park? You listen to me. Stop whatever this is you are doing and go back to school."

It's no use talking to Sharlaine. He understands her—he really does. She's scared he's going to end up like their dad, a bum on the street somewhere. But _she_ doesn't understand _him_ at all. High school isn't like middle school. It's a big pond filled with two kinds of fish—minnows and sharks, and Teddy isn't a shark.

His phone, for instance, the one he bought with money he earned from selling knock-off watches to tourists. Two months ago some Dominican kids shoved him to the floor in the gym locker room and bent his wrist back until he cried out. Then they took his phone and the cross necklace his sister had given him at Christmas. He'd known better than to tell anyone.

He wasn't being bullied—not exactly—but he was getting hustled of any money he carried. Two guys or three—one would shove him in the hall against the lockers while the others felt inside his pockets. Teddy started putting his lunch money in his shoes but one day they stole those, too—new red Jordan Instigators, the only pair he'd been able to find anywhere, two sizes too large but that was okay. Stuffed the toes with toilet paper and he was good to go.

If Officer Prescott was a straight up guy Teddy might have ratted out his tormentors, but the School Resource Officer was unreadable. Sometimes he seemed interested in the kids, asking them questions and being friendly.

But more often he stayed in his office with the door shut, either on the phone or his computer, coming out only after the dismissal bell at the end of the day, watching the students filing through the metal detectors on their way out of the building, his arms crossed over his ample belly.

The next morning Sharlaine means business when she shakes him awake. Teddy doesn't try to argue with her but gets up without a word, pours himself a bowl of cereal, and hunches over it at the kitchen table, one eye on LJ and Tyler as they bite designs in their toast and giggle.

His plan is to make a show of getting ready and then going back to bed after Sharlaine leaves to drop the twins at the sitter's on her way to work. This morning, however, she outmaneuvers him.

"I told my boss I'd be a little late today," she says as Teddy rinses out his cereal bowl. "So I'm not in any hurry. We'll walk with you. Won't that be fun, boys?"

LJ and Tyler leap around the kitchen while Teddy gives Sharlaine a jaundiced look.

"Don't walk with me. You'll embarrass me," he says. "I said I was going and I'm going."

With a sigh, Sharlaine says, "I hope that's true."

Slipping his bookbag over his shoulder before Sharlaine follows through on her threat, he waves goodbye and heads out the door.

Technically he's telling the truth. He _is_ going to school. He's just not going inside.

X X X

"Is this what American students call a _field trip_?"

Sherlock speaks as softly as he can, but he catches Teddy off guard. Seated in one of the cushioned chairs in the main reading room of the Brooklyn Public Library, Teddy yelps and drops the book in his hand.

"Man, what are you doing here?" Teddy's tone is both annoyed and surprised.

"As this is during school hours, I believe I should ask the same of you," Sherlock says. Teddy looks away and shrugs.

"You talked to my sister."

"I did not. I talked to your school principal."

"What!" Teddy's alarm draws the attention of two other patrons who turn and cast disapproving glances. "Are you trying to get me in trouble?"

"You are doing that well enough without my help," Sherlock says, rocking forward on the balls of his feet. "Do you intend to spend your entire high school career hiding in the library?"

"I'm not hiding," Teddy says. "I'm just reading."

"They don't allow you to read at school?"

"Look, man, school just isn't for me, okay? Why do you care anyway? I thought you left the country already. Went back home or something."

From the corner of his eye Sherlock sees a woman behind a desk motioning to a security guard.

"Perhaps we could discuss this better over a cup of tea." He motions to Teddy to get up as the security guard starts in their direction.

"I don't like tea."

"Something else then. Whatever you choose."

The security guard's hand hovers over his sidearm as he strides closer. Surely he doesn't consider Sherlock a danger? On the other hand, tangling with the authorities would be time-consuming and unproductive.

"If you're just going to lecture me about going to school—"

"I do not lecture. I present facts."

The security guard is now a few meters away.

"Sir, is there a problem?" And then without waiting for an answer, the guard turns to Teddy. "Son, are you okay?"

"Officer," Sherlock says quickly, "I'm having a private conversation with my…associate."

"Your what?"

"There's nothing untoward going on, other than a case of chronic school truancy that I am attempting to address."

The security guard takes a step closer and Teddy hops up. "It's okay. We're good. Sorry for the noise."

He picks his bookbag from the floor and heads toward the door, Sherlock close behind. As soon as they get outside, Teddy says, "I need a mocha frappuccino after all that."

The coffee shop around the corner is small and crowded inside but the few round tables on the sidewalk are free. Sherlock and Teddy take their drinks there and sit. For a few moments they sip in silence, the only noise the foot traffic and cars passing by.

Teddy is the first to speak.

"So how come you're all up in my business anyway?"

"Two reasons," Sherlock says. "Watson says you, despite your attempts to appear otherwise, are actually a very bright student. Gifted even."

Teddy snorts. "How would she know that?"

"Your textbooks. Most freshmen take introductory science classes, yet you have in your satchel a rather difficult physics book and a college chemistry text. You would not be enrolled in those classes unless your teachers and counselors believed you were capable of the work."

Teddy fingers the plastic lid of his coffee cup. "So what? I like science. That's all."

"Furthermore," Sherlock adds, "you are being bullied at school. Don't try to deny it. I recognize the signs. A bright kid starts missing things—your phone, for instance. Where is it? Like most adolescents you were, the last time I saw you, tied to your phone with the ubiquitous earbud umbilical cord. It was never out of your hand. Yet where is it now?"

"I lost it." Teddy's voice resonates with false bravado.

"Did you lose your shoes as well? No self-respecting teenager with any means at all would wear generic sneakers from a department store bin, yet here you are."

He tips his palm down at Teddy's white tennis shoes.

Sherlock places his hands around his cup. "You have nothing to be ashamed of. The boys who did this to you, they are the ones who have much to account for."

For a moment he considers sharing his story. An intelligent boy targeted for being smart and aware—and silent. His silence was borne of fear and a sense of futility, the adults in his life blithely dismissing the bumps and bruises as boys being boys, the long history and tradition of English boarding school life.

Except, of course, that cruelty isn't particular to a place or time. And now here's Teddy, looking at him with justified skepticism.

Another moment passes, and then Teddy says, "I'm still not going back. Nothing's changed."

"That may be true," Sherlock says. "But you should know that when I spoke to your principal today, I reminded him that the safety of his students is paramount, and if that is being violated, it will be investigated."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I suggested that the SRO at your school—"

"Officer Prescott."

"—Officer Prescott might be spending time on his computer at work visiting inappropriate websites—"

"He's looking at porn? How do you know?"

"—and that an examination of his Internet searches might be in order and a new schedule of more active patrolling the hallways established. I also suggested that the newly donated surveillance cameras be installed as soon as possible in the hallways that currently have none."

"What newly donated surveillance cameras?"

"And as for you," Sherlock says, locking eyes with Teddy, "while there's no guarantee you can change the people who might want to hurt you, you can, at least, learn to defend yourself."

Teddy's face tips up. "You're gonna teach me to fight?"

"I will do no such thing. Such an undertaking requires more time and attention than I have to give."

"Then how—"

"There is, however, a youth boxing program at the gym near your home. The owner owes me a favor and has agreed to take you on as a student, provided that you are passing all of your classes at school."

"That's bribery!"

"Call it what you will. I think of it as an opportunity."

X X X

"Why haven't you been answering your phone? I was beginning to worry!" Joan stands at the stove ladling soup into bowls. Sherlock slides into a chair and watches as she sets a bowl in front of him.

"I no longer have my phone," he says, his voice oddly distant. "I will replace it tomorrow."

"What happened?"

"Who knows? Technology is wonderful except when it isn't."

It's an observation she's heard him make before, but this time it sounds perfunctory rather than impassioned, as if his mind is elsewhere.

"Did you get to the school? Did you find out what's going on?"

Sherlock dips his spoon in his soup. "A lazy SRO, primarily, who needed some prodding to do his job properly."

"And you accomplished that how?" Joan slides into the chair opposite Sherlock.

"I assured the principal that a lawsuit was a certainty if our son's safety continued to be compromised."

Joan pauses, spoon in the air.

"You said Teddy was our son?"

"It seemed easier that way. The school records show you are his mother. In your absence I had to find equal legitimacy. Voila, Teddy became our shared progeny. It worked. The principal is taking us seriously. And Teddy has agreed to return to school."

"That's good news! When you said you wanted to talk to him alone, I wasn't sure he'd be so cooperative."

"Oh ye of little faith, Watson." His voice is still distant, almost sad.

"Are you okay?"

"I told Teddy that on Saturdays he could come round to see if I need his help with some chemistry experiments. You don't mind?"

"No, of course not. Why do you even think you need to ask?"

"It just seems that he might need some more adults in his life at the moment," Sherlock says. "Adults who won't let him down, the way too many do."

It's the kind of admission Sherlock makes from time to time about his own boyhood—a hinted-at neglect, a betrayal by people who should have cared for him instead. She starts to tell him she understands, that she's sorry, but she calls back her words from the brink. Despite the pain of losing her father to mental illness, her life has been balanced by adults who cared for her with a fierceness that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her. What can she know—what can she truly know—about the loneliness and betrayals that make Sherlock who he is.

**A/N: IMLTHO, second chapters are always the least reviewed of any story. Thanks for proving me wrong!**

**You remember Teddy from "M," the young boy Holmes had trailing Sebastian Moran. I'm not sure anyone calls him by name in the episode, but the actor, Bobb'e Thompson, is credited as playing the character called TEDDY. In my fic, he also gives his last name to Teddy.**


	3. Emily Hankins

**Chapter Three: Emily Hankins**

**Disclaimer: Fun. And. Games!**

"To your left is Radio City Music Hall, where you'll notice the large round Art Nouveau designs representing earth, wind, and fire." A young man in a striped shirt and yellow ball cap waves his hand at the building across the street.

"Excuse me!" Joan Watson calls out loudly enough to be heard over the traffic of West 50th Street. The group of twenty or so tourists listening to the young man swivel their heads in her direction.

"That's not Art Nouveau. It's Art Deco. And the rondels you are pointing to don't represent earth, wind, and fire at all. They depict dance, drama, and song."

"Oh, uh, whatever. Sure," the young man says, shrugging. He turns back to the crowd. "The, uh, rondels? They were designed by Mr. Rockefeller himself to show his appreciation of, uh, dance, and drama and, uh, opera."

"No, you're wrong!" Again Joan calls out so loudly that several suited businessmen detouring around the tourists on the sidewalk glance in her direction. "The rondels were designed by Hildreth Meiere at the request of Abby Rockefeller. Her husband didn't really like art all that much. Or music. Or dance."

The young man in the striped shirt looks less unsure and more decidedly put out now. Hands on his hips, he says, "Excuse me, but who's leading this group?"

"My question exactly," Joan says. "Where's your official guide badge?"

The young man rolls his eyes. "You're serious? What are you, the cops?"

Joan can sense the tourists around them shifting uneasily. She presses her advantage. "I've been on this tour five times this week and every other time I was issued a headset to make hearing the guide easier on the noisy street. Yet you didn't give us any. Why not?"

"Listen, lady—"

"I don't think you work for the Rockefeller Center at all. I think you're running a scam here—tricking people into listening to your made-up garbage instead of following a legitimate tour group."

"And why would I do that?" The young man crosses his arms and glares at her.

"To solicit tips at the end. You're probably giving the real guide a cut of what you make as a kickback so he'll look the other way while he takes a break for an hour."

"You're crazy, lady!" The young man uncrosses his arms and laughs. Joan notices more than a few smiles among the tourists. Clearly their sympathies are with the guide—which is not a surprise. No one wants to admit to being scammed.

"If you are a real guide, it should be easy to prove," Joan says. "Show me your tour guide license. Every guide in New York City has to pass an exam and be licensed."

The young man throws up his hands and turns to the crowd around him. "So I get a few details wrong! Can you believe this? She's trying to get me fired! And I'm already having the worst day of my life. My mother's sick in the hospital, and then my girlfriend calls and says she's moving back to Oklahoma. Oklahoma! Is that even a real place?"

Someone in the crowd guffaws and the laughter spreads.

"And to make it worse," the young man says, pointing at Joan, "this woman didn't even pay to come on this tour, but I was being Mr. Nice Guy and didn't say anything. Just let her join the tour, nice-like, and this is what I get. You ever feel like the harder you try to be nice, the worse they kick you when you're down? Yeah, me, too."

More than a few expressions in the crowd are darkly disapproving and with a sigh, Joan says, "Okay, you know what? You want to listen to this guy, go ahead. I'll just report this to the management and let them handle it."

She walks back up the street to the ticket office.

One more bad moment in a day full of them. Somehow she'd slept through her alarm, the first time in ages she's done that. Not since her time as a sober companion has she had any difficulty rising—which she's sure Sherlock would say is a hint, if she needed one, that this case isn't what she wants to be doing.

Then the hot water cut out halfway through her shower and she'd had to leap over the side of the claw-footed tub, teeth chattering, feet slipping on the wet floor tiles.

Worst of all was the spoiled yogurt for breakfast. She gagged so hard that Sherlock came into the kitchen from the other room, concerned.

"It must have expired," she said, taking a swallow of coffee and burning her tongue. Sherlock picked up the yogurt carton and lifted an eyebrow before handing her the box of cereal from the counter.

And now this. It was Emily Hankins' fault, this silly detective work Sherlock had dismissed as beneath him.

"Beneath you, too," he said two days ago when she asked him to help.

"I know it's…odd," Joan said, "but Emily's convinced there's something weird going on with the Rockefeller Center tours. She's writing a newspaper feature about things to do in New York—you know, tourist stuff that's actually worth a visit. She went on the Rockefeller Center tour and it just didn't feel right."

"Why does anyone pay for a veritable _blitzkrieg _of questionable facts that are best forgotten as soon as possible? Why fill one's brain attic with useless trivia? That might be a better journalistic question for your friend to plumb."

"I'm not arguing with you about brain attics," Joan said. "You don't want to help? Fine. We aren't busy at the moment. I'll do it by myself."

And for the next two days she had, going on the tour at different times of the day. Each guide had his own patter and spiel and rhythm, though most of the details seemed to square. Joan was about to tell Emily that, her feelings notwithstanding, the tour was like most tours, a harmless if expensive way to spend an hour in the city.

Until this afternoon. Clearly the real guide is working in cahoots with this unlicensed one, but why? Just to take a lazy hour off? It doesn't make sense. Now all she can do is report her suspicions and hope someone follows up. Not a satisfactory conclusion at all, and Emily won't be happy, unsure whether or not to mention the tours in her article. If Joan hadn't tipped the imposter off that she was on to the scam, she could have followed him after the tour and figured out the details.

As she makes her way to a uniformed woman inside the Rockefeller Center, Joan has the unmistakable conviction that Sherlock would have handled this better.

X

"Excuse me!"

Sherlock Holmes' voice is loud enough to turn the heads of the customers in the small bodega near the brownstone.

"Excuse me!" he says again, flagging down one of the owners, a thin man with a heavy Pakistani accent. "Your dairy products are expired!"

"Can I help you?" The owner angles his body between Sherlock and the milling customers, an imperfect visual shield at best. "Is something wrong?"

"This yogurt," Sherlock says, lifting the carton to eye-level. "It has the distinctive appearance of being contaminated with _mucor circinelloides_, a mold that can cause serious health problems for people with compromised immune systems. The smell and taste, too, are definitely off."

He thrusts the open container at the owner.

"You opened it! Now you have to pay!"

"I think not," Sherlock says, putting the top back on the carton. "As you can see, the original expiration date has been marked out and a later date written in. Very neatly, too. If you weren't looking for it, you might miss it. Fortunately, I _was_ looking for it. The inspectors at the health department will want an explanation. Other than, of course, your greed and willingness to put your customers' health in jeopardy."

The owner snakes out a hand and grabs Sherlock's forearm. "It's not like that," he says, _sotto voce_. "You mustn't say that. I don't want anyone to get hurt."

"Then explain why you are fraudulently selling expired products."

The owner lets go of Sherlock's arm and motions for him to follow him behind the counter to a recessed door that opens onto a small storage room. Boxes are stacked halfway to the ceiling along two walls. A desk sits askew in the center of the room, papers piled on top. As Sherlock enters, the owner closes the door behind him.

"You cannot call the health department," he says. "They will close me down."

"You are perpetrating fraud. You _should_ be closed down."

The owner flushes hard, his face gleaming in the light of a single overhead bulb. From the look of his spare inventory, the bodega is clearly struggling financially. Any other grocery would have plenty of stock ready for turnover. Sherlock waves his hand at the boxes.

"Is this recent? This lack of business?"

"The new place on Atlantic, the big store that opened up a couple months ago. They're cutting into our sales. We might not be able to stay open much longer."

It's true that a discount grocery store, Key Food, has opened up several blocks away. However, something in the owner's manner is _off_—not that he's lying but he's omitting some crucial piece of data. Sherlock narrows his eyes and leans forward.

"And?"

"And what? I changed the dates on the yogurt. It shouldn't matter! You can eat it weeks or months after the expiration! I eat it all the time!"

"The markup on a case of yogurt can't make the difference between staying in business and insolvency. You're hiding something."

Now the owner looks truly panicked. "I'll stop changing the dates! Please, you have to believe me. Don't tell the health department!"

Better to void the field for now. Sherlock moves toward the door and the owner scurries ahead of him and pulls it open. "Please," he says, almost cringing.

"I live around the corner," Sherlock says. "I will know if you continue."

"Yes, yes. Thank you!"

As he walks home, Sherlock calls up the public health inspection records on his phone. No prior citations for the local bodega—which is surprising, given how worried the owner seemed to be.

From the corner of his eye Sherlock sees a motion on the stoop of the brownstone. Emily Hankins, Watson's friend, her finger still on the doorbell.

"She's not home," Sherlock says, fishing his key from his pocket as he climbs the stairs. "Out doing your bidding, I believe."

"Actually," Emily says, "I was here to see you. If you have a few minutes."

At once Sherlock is on uneasy alert.

"You wish to discuss Watson."

"If you don't mind."

"And if I do?"

Emily shrugs. "Then I'll leave. She doesn't even need to know I was here."

It's a dilemma, whether to hear her out and possibly share his own growing concerns, or send her on her way. Certainly sending her on her way is less messy, easier. If it were about anyone other than Watson, he would. With a sigh, he motions Emily inside. She takes a seat on the end of the sofa and he sits back in the chair opposite. For a moment no one speaks and the only sound is a car horn in the distance. Then Emily leans forward slightly and crosses her arms, a contradictory posture indicating both a willingness to share and a reluctance to do so.

Not a surprise, really. He feels the same.

"So," Emily says at last, "I've been worried about Joan since…well, you know. Since Andrew died."

"I, too." Emily's expression flickers enough to register surprise and Sherlock feels himself bristle. Why shouldn't he be worried. Watson's guilt about Andrew is like an undercurrent in everything she does these days. He sees it as well as anyone—better than most.

Apparently his expression gives him away more than he intends. Emily blushes visibly and says, "I mean, I know you care about her, too. I didn't mean to imply you don't. It's just—"

She lets the sentence hang in the air and Sherlock finishes it for her. "It's just that sometimes I do not choose to express that concern."

Emily uncrosses her arms. "Look, I don't really know you. But I know Joan. And she trusts you. I wasn't sure she was making the right decision when she gave up her medical career—and I wasn't sure about that whole sober companion thing—"

She glances up at Sherlock as if asking permission to continue. He nods and says, "Go on."

"And she probably told you that it took me awhile to come around to the idea that she might be a detective."

"Not might be. _Is_."

Emily bobs her head. "Is. I get that. And until…Andrew…she seemed happier than I've ever seen her. Energized. Not that she wasn't great at what she did before, but she was excited about what she was doing."

"And now? Not so energized? Not so excited?"

"Surely you've noticed."

Sherlock takes a deep breath and settles back in the chair. Emily Hankins isn't the first person to talk about Watson's emotional state since Andrew Mittal's murder. Detective Bell has broached the subject as well.

"My suggestion that she speak to someone about her feelings has fallen on deaf ears," he says. "I don't see what else I can do."

A flash of anger crosses Emily's face. Anger with him? With the situation? On behalf of Watson? A bewildering conundrum—just the sort of interaction he finds so exhausting with people he doesn't know well.

"Her confidence is shaken," Emily says, her tone more forceful than her words call for. Anger at him, then. Sherlock tips his chin down and considers.

"And you believe I can remedy that somehow."

"Last week she told me about the Carpenter case."

"The missing wife who absconded with the family savings."

"Joan's case. The one she was working hard on, until you stepped in uninvited and solved it."

Sherlock sits upright. "Watson appreciates my help. She often solicits it."

"And sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she is perfectly fine doing things on her own."

"Ms. Hankins, it may have escaped your attention that the point of being a consulting detective is to illuminate mysteries and, hopefully, bring any wrongdoers to justice. Watson and I are not competitors. When we work in tandem, her insights are invaluable—"

"Right! When you work in tandem. But Joan was working on the Carpenter case alone and she was surprised when you stepped in without being asked."

"She told you this?"

"She's my best friend. Of course she did."

It's not Emily Hankins' almost-smug expression that exasperates him but the idea that Watson hasn't confided in him about something so personal. He has no hesitation in saying that Watson understands him better than anyone else—better than his immediate family, better, even, than Jamie Moriarity. That she does not feel he understands her is…disappointing.

Sherlock gets to his feet. From the look on her face, Emily is startled, but she gets up slowly.

"Thank you for expressing your concern," he says, one arm at his side like a soldier, the other indicating the way to the door. Emily blinks twice.

"I didn't mean to upset you," she says.

He isn't upset, not exactly. Discomfited, perhaps. It's vexing, this news about Watson's failure to trust him. It shifts what he thought he knew about their collaboration—the easy give and take that feels comfortable and productive—though apparently only to him.

He sees her to the door, still musing. "Shall I tell her you came by?"

Emily pauses long enough to shake her head. "I don't want to upset her either."

X X

The walk to the subway station is an obstacle course of baby buggies and older people pulling chrome shopping carts behind them. Emily dodges a young boy bouncing a ball and gives the woman she assumes is his mother a dirty look. Why do hipster New Yorkers feel entitled to let their children run wild?

Well, her own seven-year-old has been known to dart into traffic and knock other kids out of the way on the playground. Petite and brunette like her mother, Devin can power through a crowd like a tornado when she's overly excited—which to be honest, is much of the time.

In many ways Emily feels like an imposter as a mother. She watches her daughter navigating the world like someone watching a bug under a glass—curious and mildly amused but slightly removed, an annoyance to the bug when she does interfere. Although she knows mothers who swear they move in psychic, synchronized orbits with their children, Emily has never felt that way—has, in fact, struggled to understand her daughter. They are nothing alike—Emily calm and measured, her daughter quixotic and impassioned—one moment in furious argument with a playmate, the next tender and weepy over a wounded park pigeon.

Yet when she watches her daughter sleeping, leaning close enough to hear her whisper-soft breaths, Emily's heart gives a lurch and she knows without a doubt that if anything happens to her child she will die.

She feels like an imposter, in part, because she never imagined that she would have children. Nor marry. Nor live in a big city, let alone New York. Nor work for a newspaper writing features and sometimes getting an interesting assignment on the crime beat. Her life still feels alien to her—the settled steadiness of it after drifting without any real goals for so long.

One of the things she's always admired about Joan is her unwavering determination to reach her goals. Even back at the University of Michigan when they'd met, Joan had always known what she was going to do: Pre-med, medical school, a surgical residency, a practice in New York.

"You grew up there," Emily said. "Don't you want to try living somewhere else for a change?"

"That's why I came to Michigan for college," Joan laughed. "But I found out that after New York, there _is_ nowhere else."

She'd made New York sound so enticing that although Emily had always imagined herself moving back home to Lansing, when she graduated she moved into a tiny walk-up apartment in Queens that she shared with Joan and two other medical students.

An English major, Emily worked first in a miserable job as a receptionist and then secretary for a small law firm. She was the go-to person when a customer wanted a recommendation at the independent bookstore where she worked on the weekends. By the time Joan was finishing her residency, Emily had had enough of both jobs and was considering going back to the Midwest.

"I'll miss this," Emily said one afternoon as she and Joan sipped coffee at a sidewalk café. "But I'm not really moving forward, you know? Nothing's really happening for me."

"Why not?" Joan said. "You're the only one who can make it happen."

Emily was taken aback.

"It's not that simple," she said. "I don't even know what I want to be doing."

Joan took a slow sip of her coffee. "You always liked writing," she said. "What about doing something with it?"

"Like writing advertising copy? No, thanks. I'm not willing to sell my soul."

"Like writing for a newspaper. Or a magazine. There are lots of publishers in New York."

Emily sighed. "In case you haven't noticed," she said, "the newspaper business is struggling. This is the age of citizen journalists publishing blogs. No one reads newspapers anymore."

"I do," Joan said. "I can't be the only one."

"I haven't even studied journalism," Emily said, ending the conversation with a dismissive wave of her hand.

But the idea had lingered. She'd never get a job at the New York Times but to her astonishment she was able to convince a small online publisher to take her on as an unpaid intern. Six months later she moved on to a paying job with a bigger paper—and now here she was, her life put together in a way she could never have imagined a few years ago.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket. Joan—probably calling with an update about the Rockefeller thing. Surely Sherlock hasn't told her about the visit?

"Hey, what's the news?" Emily says, trying to sound nonchalant and breezy. She hears Joan sigh on the other end.

"Not good," she says. "You were definitely right about the guides. Most of them are legit but there's at least one who's sitting out his assigned tour and letting a friend take over for an hour. Maybe he's just lazy and wants a break—or he might be up to something else. I couldn't find out. I did report it and the manager took all my information. That's no guarantee they'll do anything about it."

She sounds so downcast that Emily considers whether to comment on it.

"You still there?" Joan says.

"Oh, yeah. Well, you did what you could."

"What about your article?"

"Don't worry about that. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware. I'll tell the readers to take what the tour guides say with a grain of salt. They should anyway. Who needs to know all the facts they throw at you on one of those tours?"

"That's what Sherlock said," Joan says. "You two should have a conversation sometime."

X X X

Before he actually hears the door open, Sherlock feels the change in air pressure.

"I'm home!" Watson calls. "Where are you?"

"In the study," Sherlock says. "Working."

Joan's footfalls are brisk and in a moment she's standing behind him. Swiveling his chair around, he notices at once her expression—not as haunted as it has been, her shoulders back like someone waiting to deliver news.

"You solved your case."

Joan shifts slightly and frowns. "No, not exactly. I mean, I confirmed that something shifty is going on with the Rockefeller tour guides, but I didn't solve everything. But that's okay. I solved something else, something that affects you and me directly."

"Which is?"

"You know the bodega on the corner?"

"The one that sold you bad yogurt."

Joan jumps slightly and then regains her composure. "This morning. You remember the yogurt I had for breakfast."

"I do indeed," Sherlock says. "In fact, I decided to investigate it."

Joan's shoulders fall. She takes a step back. "What do you mean, you decided to investigate it?"

"I mean," Sherlock says, eyeing her closely, "that I wondered why the expiration date on the yogurt carton had been marked out and rewritten."

"And you found out." A flat statement laced with disappointment. Sherlock rubs the fingers of his right hand together—a tactile distraction that keeps him focused on the present.

"I did not pursue it after all. I have been busy with other concerns this morning."

Immediately Joan's mood brightens. "Well, I know what's going on. Mr. Bhati, the owner—"

"You know his name?"

"Of course I know his name. I shop there all the time. His wife works there, too, and sometimes his son, Tahir, helps out."

"You _know_ them? You've spoken to them?"

"Why do you look so surprised? They're our neighbors. Sort of. People we see all the time. Of course I speak to them."

He loves moments like this—if love is the right word—little windows into Watson's world, glimpses into how she sees and moves and knows things that have inexplicably escaped his attention.

"The thing is," Watson says, one hand on her hip, "that Mr. Bhati has been changing the expiration dates on his dairy because he's being blackmailed."

"Explain," Sherlock says, genuinely surprised.

"A couple of months ago a new health department inspector started pressuring the small businesses in this area to give him a 'donation' or he'd report violations and get them fined. At first Mr. Bhati agreed to it because the fine was so much more than the amount the inspector was extorting."

"And then the inspector raised his demands," Sherlock says. That explains the shrinking revenue, the scaled back inventory, the expired dairy products that couldn't be thrown out and replaced.

"When I confronted Mr, Bhati about changing the expiration dates, he told me about the blackmail. He's been too afraid to report it. He doesn't know who to trust in city hall."

"He confided in you. He trusted you."

"I guess," Joan says. "He seemed relieved when I started questioning him."

Even in the relatively dim light of the room Sherlock can see that Joan's face is lit, that she exudes self-satisfaction.

As she should, of course. He nods and says, "Well done, Watson. You've probably saved that family from losing their business."

"I thought you could call your contacts at the health department," Joan says. "I'm filing a report, but it might help if you—"

"I have no doubt that your word will be sufficient to launch an internal investigation," Sherlock says, turning his chair back around so he can see his laptop—and to hide any untoward expression that might linger on his face. "You are, after all, a respected professional, Watson. You hardly need me to hold your hand."

**A/N: Real life got in the way of a quicker update! Hope you enjoy this tardy one! Thanks to everyone who reads, and double thanks to everyone who takes the trouble to leave a review.**


	4. Alfredo Llamosa

**Chapter Four: Alfredo Llamosa**

**Disclaimer: Our mutual playground. Hope you enjoy what I've built here!**

Alfredo Llamosa knows how other people see him. To be black in America means to be, of necessity, hyperaware of other people's perceptions. Add tall and dark and male to the calculus and who he is becomes hidden behind a pernicious mythology. When he told Joan Watson that he figured he hadn't been asked to be a sponsor because he was "quiet," he was playing with her, watching to see if she caught his whiff of sarcasm. The slightest roll of her eyes when he said it told him that she understood. _Good._

In some ways Joan knows him better than Sherlock does. They grew up in adjacent neighborhoods in Queens, only ten blocks apart. Sometimes when Alfredo drops by the brownstone to check on Sherlock, Joan makes him a cup of coffee—not tea, thank you—and they tick through a list of things they recall from their childhoods. Did she ever skate at the Roll Around in Astoria? _Every Saturday in the summers._ Did he remember the shabby Gloria Theater that showed only second run movies? _His favorite hangout until high school._ They spent half an hour arguing the merits of Petey's burgers over those at the Jackson Hole diner until Sherlock tapped his foot impatiently and asked if they were ever going to discuss anything remotely interesting.

"_We're_ interested," Joan said, but Alfredo caught her glance and a hint of a smile, and when she changed the subject abruptly to a breaking news story about a hit and run, he followed her lead.

When Joan calls him early one Saturday morning, he assumes she wants to schedule another carjacking lesson. She mastered the elementals months ago and promised to let him show her some workarounds for the newest alarm systems. That she hasn't gotten back with him in awhile is easy to understand—her friend's death, moving back into the brownstone. She's been busy. More than that, Sherlock alluded to her being unsettled the last time they spoke before a meeting.

But Joan isn't calling about a lesson. "It's Sherlock," she says. "He's in some sort of weird mood right now."

"You mean weirder than usual," Alfredo says. He hears Joan laugh softly.

"It all started with this case we were on. Missing person. It went nowhere, and Sherlock just let it go. You know how he can be—he never lets go when he's on to something. Not this time. When our early leads didn't turn up anything, he said he was done."

"Maybe he figured there wasn't enough evidence to solve it so he didn't want to waste his time."

Alfredo hears Joan sigh on the other end of the line.

"Sherlock keeps several boxes of cold cases," she says. "He goes through them whenever he has a spare moment. No, this is something else. He's distracted, or upset about something. He says he's fine, but I can tell he isn't."

"You want me to ask him to go to a meeting?"

"I want you to come talk to him," Joan says. "As his friend. He might tell you what's going on."

Alfredo tries to keep the skepticism out of his voice when he agrees to a time. It's true that Sherlock sometimes gives him a peek into his inner life—though those glimpses are offered at odd moments while something else is the presumed focus—taking apart a magnetic door lock on a Lamborghini Gallardo, for instance, or looking at specs on the Ferrari 458 Spider.

More often Alfredo is the one giving details of his life story, not because Sherlock asks for them but because Alfredo needs to share them to feel connected as his sponsor.

"You and me," he told him early on in their relationship, "we're not that different. I jacked my first car when I was 14 on a dare, but I kept on doing it because I was bored. I can't really explain it. I mean, my parents tried. We lived in a good house, in a nice place. Lots of my friends had less. But I kept thinking there had to be more to life than getting a job and raising a family. The thought of the kind of conventional life my parents had was so boring."

"And your boredom led you to drugs," Sherlock said. Alfredo shook his head. "Partly," he said. "But I didn't spin out of control until my parents split up and my dad went back to Colombia. For a long time I blamed my addiction on my parents' divorce, but the reality is—I was looking for a fix a long time before that."

Sherlock was silent for a few moments. "You were bored because you have an exceptional intelligence. If you had had an opportunity to push yourself educationally—"

"Oh, I had the opportunity," Alfredo said, flushing. Even after all this time he was still embarrassed to confess this part of his story. "I had a free ride to Cornell to study chemical engineering. Your family makes less than a hundred grand a year, lots of the Ivies waive tuition for good students. Summer before I was to start, I got busted for possession at a friend's party. That was the end of my education."

"The university rescinded your acceptance?"

"I didn't find out," Alfredo said. "I withdrew. By then I didn't care. I was more interested in getting high."

Sherlock said nothing more and Alfredo felt like his attempt to find common ground had floundered.

"You get that he's not like anyone else," Joan told him later.

Alfredo had huffed in irritation. "_No_ one's like anyone else," he said. "Sherlock isn't more of an individual than you or me."

But Alfredo knew what she meant. And despite his protests to the contrary, he had to admit that Sherlock Holmes was not like anyone else he knew.

"He's on the roof," Joan tells him when he gets to the brownstone shortly before noon. She presses a folded piece of cloth and mesh into his hand. "If he's checking the bees, you might want this."

Alfredo unfolds the cloth and sees that it is a beekeeper's veil. "I can wait," he says, but Joan waves him toward the staircase.

Like most New Yorkers, Alfredo appreciates a skyline view when he can get it. His basement apartment affords him little natural light, much less a majestic view of Manhattan across the East River. As he opens the door onto the roof, Alfredo scans the horizon—the 59th Street Bridge on the right, the Williamsburg Bridge on the left. Across the river he can see the cars along FDR Drive. The spire of the Empire State Building and the façade of the Chrysler Building are immediately recognizable.

"Watson sent you." Sherlock is sitting on what appears to be a folding campstool facing the beehive, which, Alfredo notes thankfully, seems undisturbed. Picking up a wooden crate, Alfredo turns it over and sits down.

"Joan thought you might want to talk." No use pretending this visit is anything else. Sherlock's look is squinty and sardonic and prolonged. Turning back to the bees at last, Sherlock says, "She was wrong."

"You mind if I ask you a few questions, then?"

"If I say I do mind?"

"I'm going to ask them anyway."

Sherlock shrugs.

"What's with that case you gave up on?"

Sherlock bristles visibly. "I did not give up on a case. I am allocating my energies elsewhere. I will return to it later."

"Oh!" Alfredo says, genuinely surprised. He waits a beat, watching the bees crawling under the glass. "What are you allocating your energies on?"

"It wouldn't interest you," Sherlock says quickly.

"You can't read my mind," Alfredo says just as quickly. "How do you know?"

"Because," Sherlock says, darting a glance at him, "it is boring. Even to me, and I refuse to inflict boredom on a professed drug addict for whom boredom is a trigger."

Something about Sherlock's manner is off, as if his brusqueness is a sham. "I appreciate your concern," Alfredo says, "but I'm good. What's on your mind?"

Sitting back, Sherlock seems to make a decision. "It's an existential question, actually. Or more precisely, an existential dilemma. This case Watson said I had abandoned? Two weeks ago a young man reported to the NYPD that his older brother is missing. Other than take his report, the police could do little, so Captain Gregson asked for our help. Watson and I interviewed the brother, the girlfriend, the missing man's work colleagues. They are all in agreement—the missing man is a paragon of virtue, a kind-hearted friend and lover who has, apparently, no enemies who would wish him harm."

"Could he have been kidnapped?" Alfredo says.

"No one has asked for a ransom."

"Maybe he was killed in a robbery."

"No body has been found. That doesn't mean he wasn't murdered, of course, but the lack of evidence suggests another possibility."

"Which is?"

"The young man doesn't want to be found. That he is missing because he removed himself."

"Wait a minute," Alfredo says. "You mean he ran away."

"It's not that uncommon. People have gone so far as to stage their own deaths in order to keep the authorities from seeking them."

Alfredo frowns. "But why—"

"Multiple reasons," Sherlock says. "To avoid repaying gambling debts, to exit an unhappy marriage, to cause pain for those left behind." His expression flickers oddly and then flattens. Alfredo leans forward.

"So you think this guy is trying to escape something?"

"I'm sure of it. What I'm not sure of," he says, pausing, "is whether someone who doesn't want to be found should be. Why shouldn't someone unhappy with his present life be able to walk away? What's wrong with that, really?"

"Like you did last summer," Alfredo says. At once he knows he's made a mistake. Sherlock takes a deep breath and stands up, chest out, his taut posture indicating the conversation is over.

"Not like that at all," he says, the testy tone in his tone unmistakable. "Watson always knew where I was. She could have contacted me at any time."

Alfredo knows better than to linger when Sherlock is in this mood. As he starts back down the stairs, he mentally rehearses what he'll say to Joan. She so rarely asks him for anything, and now he's failed her.

X

As Joan closes the front door behind Alfredo, she hears Sherlock on the steps.

"You could have contacted me, you know."

He's standing on the bottom step, his arms stiffly at this side.

"I thought you might feel more comfortable talking to Alfredo," Joan says. "You seem—distant—lately and I—"

Sherlock steps to the floor. "When I was in London. You could have called."

"What?"

"I didn't run away," Sherlock says. He grimaces like someone in pain and adds, "Or if I did, you knew how to find me."

"I didn't think you wanted me to," Joan says. "You hardly said goodbye." The lingering hurt in her voice surprises her. She thought she was beyond that. "Besides, why are you bringing that up now?"

"Our missing person case," Sherlock says. "The one you thought I had given up on. I'm convinced Bart Evans walked away and doesn't want to be found."

"We talked about that possibility already," Joan says. "What's your point?"

"Perhaps his reasons for walking away are sound ones. Why shouldn't he be able to leave?"

Sherlock bounces slightly on the balls of his feet, his chin thrust forward, an offensive posture he adopts when he invites her to pick an argument apart.

"His brother is worried," Joan says. "He deserves to know what happened. It isn't fair if Bart just walked away without an explanation."

"What if the younger brother is abusive? According to the people who know him, Bart Evans is unusually docile. Perhaps this is the only way he can extricate himself from a bad situation."

"What about his girlfriend? Or his boss? Don't they need to know if he isn't coming back?"

"From their point of view, certainly. Perhaps even from ours. But do we have the right to impinge on what he wants?"

It's a question Joan has already considered and discarded. _No man is an island_. She tells Sherlock so.

"You can't pretend that your actions don't have consequences," she adds. The heat in her voice is still there—and looking up at Sherlock, she knows he hears it, too. "Yes, even you. People are affected by what you do, whether you want them to be or not."

She walks from the hall and sits on the sofa, irritated with herself for letting her anger show. Following her into the room, Sherlock sits on the chair closest to the fireplace.

"It is true," he says, "that in the past I operated as if my actions affected me alone. I have come to realize, with your help, that such an idea is incomplete and false, that there is a sort of ripple effect that emanates from what we do. Your asking Alfredo to speak to me, for instance, is because I failed to tell you why I have not been not pursuing the Bart Evans case with more enthusiasm."

He looks like an earnest schoolboy as he speaks, or like someone half expecting a blow. Joan feels a stab of sorrow on his behalf.

"That's okay," she says. "Maybe you're right. If Bart Evans doesn't want to be found, maybe we shouldn't look for him. Besides, the trail went cold so fast, I don't know where we would look."

Sherlock goes still, his head tipped slightly to the side. "What did you say, Watson?"

"I said that the trail is cold. We don't know where to look."

"It is cold, isn't it? Unusually cold. People almost never vanish into thin air. They have to interact with others, even if it is just the cashier at the local bodega. Yet Mr. Evans left work one day and was never seen again. No record of a car rental, no airplane ticket, no bus fare with his name on it. No credit card use, no checks written, no ATM withdrawals."

"If he was planning on walking away," Joan says, "he would have established another identity before he left. That way he would have access to transportation and money."

"Yet none of the people we interviewed had any inkling that he was planning to leave."

"Maybe something happened that forced his hand," Joan says. "He left because he got in trouble somehow."

Sherlock runs his fingers along the arm of the chair. "While that would explain why his friends and family were startled by his absence, it doesn't explain how he is able to function without money or access to it. If he is on the run, his name should have shown up somewhere by now, yet when Detective Bell ran his name through the credit database, nothing showed up."

"Then he's using an alias," Joan says. "He could have gotten a false identity ready before now—applied for credit cards, bought a stolen social security number."

"Which takes us," Sherlock says, "back to our starting point. Bart Evans planned ahead of time to leave or he left out of a sudden necessity. Either way, the people who know him are in the dark. That not one person knows something is incongruous."

"Some people are hard to know," Joan says, letting her words do double duty. "But let's say you're right, that at least one person knows something. What do we do now?"

Sherlock stands up. "Get your coat, Watson. We have to interview the people who knew Bart Evans again."

X X

"Like I told you, Bart and I moved here two years ago from a small town in North Carolina you never heard of. He got a job in the IT department of the New York Department of Education—you know, doing computer stuff. I don't even understand all of it. He made enough so I could work on my novel. I told him I'd pay him back when I finished the book. He was like that—unselfish."

Bart Evans' younger brother Harold sits on one end of a lumpy futon. Watson sits on the other. Sherlock paces slowly around the room. Through one door is a tiny kitchenette. A full garbage can by the stove is visible, fast food wrappers and take-out boxes stacked high.

Through the other door is a small bathroom. A single wadded towel hangs on the rack.

Sherlock whirls back to Harold. "You and your brother have always shared this apartment?"

"Ever since we moved to New York. I mean, I know it's small, but until I get a paying job—"

"And your banking?"

"Excuse me?"

Watson picks up the thread. "Did you and your brother share a joint banking account?"

"Well, yeah. Is that a problem?"

"Not a problem," Watson says, "but not usual."

"It costs money to have an account," Harold Evans says, his tone defensive. "You have to keep a certain balance."

"Since your brother's disappearance," Sherlock says, "have you noticed any withdrawals other than the ones you've made yourself?"

"No," Harold Evans says. "That's why I think something bad must have happened to him. I told the police—"

"It's possible," Sherlock says, cutting him off. He catches Watson's eye and she follows him to the door. "Thank you, Mr. Evans. We'll be in touch."

They are halfway down the sidewalk before Watson says, "You saw something."

"Several somethings, as did you, I'm sure," he says. He starts to list them but pulls himself up short and waits. Sure enough, Watson's observations are apt.

"He lives there alone," she says. "Unless one of the brothers sleeps on the floor. The futon was the only bed."

"They _could_ sleep in shifts," Sherlock says, "though that seems highly unlikely."

"Just as they could share a towel—or never cook—but that also seems unlikely. Except for the futon, there wasn't any other furniture. The clothes he had piled up in a corner didn't look like enough for two people. Why would he lie and say that his brother lived there when he didn't?"

"Perhaps Bart Evans did live there," Sherlock says. He sees Watson jerk back and stop. He takes a step in her direction, forcing passersby to detour around them.

"You just agreed with me that Harold Evans lives there alone."

"Harold Evans lives there now. Until he disappeared, Bart Evans lived there."

Watson starts walking again and Sherlock matches her stride. "So where was Harold before he moved in?"

"He was there," Sherlock says. "With Bart."

Watson's face is a delight to behold. Her expression shifts in degrees as her brain tumbles the pieces into place, going from baffled to enlightened, her eyes bright with her discovery.

"They are the same person!"

"You recall that when we talked to Bart Evans' girlfriend, she said she's never met his brother, Harold, though they have spoken on the phone. Likewise with Bart's colleagues at work. They knew almost nothing about his private life, in fact—a disturbing revelation about the nature of American workplaces—unless you prefer anonymity and privacy, of course. This entire case is proof of how little we do know about other people."

"You're joking now," Watson says, barely containing a grin, "but the serious question is, why go to all this trouble to report someone missing who doesn't even exist. He'll get in trouble for filing a false report. And he's lost his job. And his girlfriend. For what?"

"Who can say? Mr. Evans wanted to start over—and nice guy that he was reputed to be, he couldn't think of any other way to do so than to shed one persona and become his brother."

"If he even has a brother."

"Oh, he does," Sherlock says. "The joint banking account, remember? Probably still living in No-Name Town, North Carolina. At any rate, that should be easy enough to track down."

"But still," Watson says, shaking her head, "it seems so cowardly, ducking out on everything and everyone like that. You should treat the people you care about better."

"The vagaries of the human heart," Sherlock says. "As well we both know."

They're quiet on the subway ride home—partly because they can't talk over the roving mariachi band playing for tips that enters the train at the Times Square stop and doesn't exit until Wall Street. By the time they reach their own stop and walk the three blocks to the brownstone, Watson volunteers to step around the corner to order takeout Thai.

Sherlock heads straight to the roof. The overturned crate is still there, a reminder of Alfredo's earlier visit. When he left they were unhappy with each other—or Sherlock was unhappy to be reminded of the pain he caused when he left for London. Tomorrow he'll call Alfredo and make amends somehow. The car show at the Barclays Center next month. He'll buy tickets to that for the two of them.

Unlatching the beehive door, he tugs on the hinge and pulls out the packet of letters from Irene. Not Irene, he tells himself, again. _Not Irene._ Moriarity. Wasn't he scolding Watson about that same misstep—calling Del Gruner by his Christian name?

In his dreams she will always be Irene, but in his waking life he is in control.

Fishing out the careworn envelope he carries in his pocket, he slides it into the packet of letters. Since it arrived in the mail three days ago it's been like a weight in his pocket, in his chest. He hasn't told Watson about it—won't tell her. He knows what she would say, that it's folly to keep the connection open, tenuous though it may be.

If Moriarity is telling the truth in this letter, that her trial is close to being scheduled, he'll have to fortify himself to be called to testify. It's a daunting notion, facing her in the courtroom, the pubic drama of lawyers and jury and judge. He has a moment of great sympathy for people like Bart Evans who have an overwhelming need to flee.

Closing the door of the beehive, he takes a moment to scan for one of the Euglassia Watsonias. There in one corner, its feathered antennae waving in salute. Pulling up the campstool close to the hive, he settles in to watch.

When he does go to court, he won't be alone, of course. Watson will be there. His heartbeat starts to slow, calmed by that thought—or by the comforting buzz of the bees.

**A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing. Your comments help me improve!**


	5. Marcus Bell

**Chapter Five: Marcus Bell**

**Disclaimer: Something borrowed, nothing gained.**

It's alarming how deeply Watson sleeps. If he thought it would do any good, Sherlock would caution her about it, about her need to cultivate more diligence when unconscious. If someone intended to do her harm, this moment would be prime—curled on her side, her face partially obscured by her hair, one hand tucked under her pillow and the other arm thrown out in abandon—her oblivion to her surroundings almost complete.

When he watches her sleep, she rarely stirs. Or if she does, her motions are small and contained in the world of her dreams. At those moments Sherlock goes stock still, hardly daring to breathe, the note or tea tray or Clyde in his hand poised in midair until her breathing slows again, and then he gently, gently, lowers to the bed or chair whatever he wants her to see on rising and backs out from her room.

But not before taking another moment to appreciate the sight of her asleep.

It's shameless, of course.

Not the waking per se. He never wakes her without having something worth waking _for_—a breakfast to eat, an insight to share, a place to hurry to.

But the guilty pleasure of listening to her measured breathing, of appreciating the curve of her hip draped by the chenille bedspread, of noting the way the light slips around the edges of the shutters and frames her silhouette. And when he rouses her, the delight of seeing her eyelashes flutter against her cheek, her mind drifting back from the darkness and illuminating her features again.

Of course it's sexual—all voyeurism has, at its core, an awareness of the observer's and the observed's sexuality—but it's also less and more than that.

_Less _because waking Watson is functional—and therefore justified.

But _more_ because in the moments before he flashes the lamp in her face or taps in Morse code or lifts the bugle to his lips, he longs for something else.

"You wouldn't be sleeping with him, psychologically speaking. You'd be sleeping with me," he told her in London when he accused her of being attracted to Mycroft. "Oh, you've surely thought about it."

_He _certainly had. Her raised eyebrow was the tell that proved _she_ had, too. He was both gratified and frustrated knowing that.

Most of the time he cordons off that thought in a remote, dusty corner of his brain attic.

But sometimes, like tonight, he is startled to find himself standing motionless in her doorway, driven there by something akin to loneliness or sadness, usually after the euphoria of successfully concluding a case morphs into a predictable letdown—the intense focus of days or weeks of collaboration futzing out suddenly like a poorly made campfire.

That's the most dangerous time for him—after the completed file is turned over to the NYPD and his brain idles down. If drugs call out to him daily, they _scream_ his name the evening after he concludes a case.

The most recent case was particularly challenging—a drive-by shooting requiring hundreds of interview hours and two call-back trips to the morgue to re-examine the victim's body. Detective Bell had been frankly skeptical that the perp could be found, though when they'd presented him with the shooter's name at last, he nodded, as if he had expected it all along.

After their final briefing they'd gotten home so late from the precinct that Watson said she was too tired for dinner and had gone to bed. Sherlock poured a bowl of cereal and then abandoned it uneaten. He pulled down the notes and photographs from the board and packed them away. He even stretched out briefly on the sofa and closed his eyes.

But now he is here, in Watson's doorway, watching her sleep. With no reason—with no plan to wake her—it becomes an unforgivable invasion of her privacy.

Yet he doesn't leave. Instead he does what he often does when finds himself anchored in her doorway in the middle of the night. He does a mental walkabout of all the times she's touched him.

For as long as he can remember, Sherlock has suffered the touch of others. Truly, genuinely suffered them—the sensory overload causing him physical pain.

Not everyone's touch, of course. Or more precisely, more tolerable from some people than others. His mother—he recalls her ruffling his hair or pulling him into a loose embrace. Irene—Moriarity—best not to remember too much there.

He has catalogued the times Watson has touched him, and he pulls those memories out like a careworn notebook as he watches her sleep. Most of the touches were accidental—a finger making an electric contact when she handed him a cup of tea, her hand grazing his when they reached for the light switch at the same time, her palm lifting in the air, brushing past his knee as they sat side by side looking at the laptop. Those moments are catalogued and relished at length, though the few deliberate touches are mulled over in a different way.

The first one—when he sat slumped in the precinct office waiting to be arrested for assaulting Sebastian Moran. He remembers with exquisite precision how the sofa had dipped slightly under Watson's thigh as she perched on the edge, her hand drifting to his arm, the press of each finger distinct through the fabric of his coat.

And another—this time slumped in a chair in the brownstone, the velvet seat so worn that it felt like silk, her gloved hand probing and stitching and pulling and patting the bullet wound, all the time as she clucked and fussed. His shoulder had been on fire, and only partly from the torn flesh.

The most recent one—her fist contacting with his arm, forceful but still pulling her punch enough to make her point. "What was that for?" he had protested, his eyes cutting to follow the swirl of her dress as she railed about him, about Andrew, about the misbegotten dinner with his father.

He's ashamed of giving in to compulsion this way, of standing in her doorway without her awareness. It's as if fighting the persistent siren call of heroin has left him unable to resist this other, more insidious, temptation.

Not that he will do anything other than stand for a few moments listening to her sleep. "She's safe," he says to himself as he always does, like a mantra. Inhaling deeply, he wills his heart to slow as he steps back into the hall.

In the kitchen he is dumping out the soggy cereal when his phone vibrates in his pocket. Detective Bell—a text asking Sherlock to call in the morning.

"Probably nothing," the detective's note reads, "but I want to run it by you and Joan."

Another case. The relief is almost palpable. For a moment Sherlock considers darting back up the stairs and waking Watson.

There's no reason, really, to wake her now, except to share the news and his excitement, such as it is. Or more precisely, his anticipation. Detective Bell isn't given to flights of fancy. If he wants a consultation, the case is hardly _nothing._

Still, the case will be there in the morning. And now he has sufficient time to plan the best way to wake her.

X

The smell is the worst part. As soon as Marcus steps across the threshold of the apartment, there it is—acrid, sharp, with an unmistakable undertone of sweetness like burnt sugar. Someone has died here in a fire.

Or at least was burned in the fire. The M.E. will know soon enough if the knife wound or the fire was the actual cause of death.

As he moves around the scorched kitchen, Marcus lifts his hand to partially cover his nose, not that it helps much. The smell itself isn't as troubling as Marcus' recollection of the same smell for weeks after 9/11. At the time he'd had been reassigned a patrol in lower Manhattan, and although he never got used to seeing the photocopied missing person notices plastered on every wooden barricade and lamppost, it is the smell—or the memory of it—that sometimes wakes him up at night.

He looks up as Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson enter the kitchen.

"Like I told you," Marcus says, "we have the probable killer in custody, but something feels off to me." Pulling out his notebook, he reads, "James Darnell, 32, knife wound to the neck, partially burned. Lived here with his girlfriend, Jessica Wells, and her two kids. She's a nurse at Mt. Sinai, works second shift, so she wasn't home when the fire broke out. Neighbor reported the fire about 7 PM, said she saw a man coming out of the apartment with the two children. She also gave us a description of his car and he was snagged at a traffic stop."

"Were the children with him?" Joan asks, and Marcus nods.

"Man's name is Steven Smith. He used to date their mother."

"And it ended badly? You think he wanted to hurt the children to retaliate?" Holmes says, his eyes squinted the way he does when he's casting about for data. Marcus tips his head.

"Could be. Ms. Wells says she is the one who broke it off six months ago. Smith was upset but has never been violent before."

Holmes purses his lips together and clasps his hands behind his back. "Did he say why he came to the apartment?"

Marcus consults his notebook before answering. "Said he was cleaning out a closet at his place and he found some of Ms. Wells' things she'd left behind. He was returning them to her when he realized the apartment was on fire. Said he heard noise and saw smoke coming from under the door so he broke in, grabbed the kids, and took them outside to safety. According to him, he didn't know the victim was inside."

Joan frowns. "The doesn't seem likely. The kids are how old?"

"Six and four. Girl and a boy. Smith said they were in the front bedroom watching TV when he came in."

"Then an adult had to be there with them somewhere," Joan says. "He's not telling the truth."

While they talk, Holmes circles the kitchen, occasionally stooping to examine something more closely. Once he runs his gloved finger along the edge of the blackened counter and then leans down so close to the stove that his nose almost touches it. Suddenly he stands upright and faces Marcus.

"How did she know his car?"

"What?"

"The neighbor. You said she gave the police a description of his car."

"I guess she saw him getting in it," Marcus says.

"She was the one who called about the fire," Joan says, looking at Holmes. "When would she have had time to notice his car? Maybe she doesn't remember it from today, but earlier."

Holmes takes a step toward Joan. "Mr. Smith has been here before. He may, in fact, be a regular visitor."

As often as he's seen them do it, Marcus is still caught by surprise at this telepathy thing Joan and Holmes seem to have, this instant, invisible give-and-take when they are following a lead.

"You think Ms. Wells and Smith were still an item? That she wasn't telling her current boyfriend that she was seeing her ex?" Marcus asks.

"That, or he was keeping an eye on her," Holmes says. "Watching her."

"A stalker."

"Or a watcher," Holmes says with some asperity. "Perhaps he meant no harm but needed to see her."

"Like I said, a stalker. I'll ask the neighbor if she's seen his car before. And I can check with Ms. Wells about their relationship."

Holmes is unusually quiet on the ride back to the station. When he interviews Steve Smith in the precinct holding cell, however, he bounces as he speaks, as if he is agitated.

"You said you were returning some of Ms. Wells' things when you noticed the fire," Holmes says. Steve Smith, a tall, thin man with dark hair and moustache in obvious need of a trim crosses his arms and stands close to the bars.

"That's right. Some of her clothes."

"And you didn't notice them in your closet for the past six months?" Holmes' tone is frankly skeptical. At his side, Joan shifts position.

"You see why that's hard to believe," she says. "The very day you decide to return her things, the boyfriend who replaced you ends up dead."

"I didn't kill him!"

Marcus has heard this before. With a huff of impatience, he says, "Why don't you stop wasting everyone's time and tell us the truth?"

"What else can I say?" Steve Smith says, throwing his arms in the air. "I didn't kill him! I don't even know how he died!"

"Medical examiner says he bled out from a knife wound to the throat. Whoever killed him then set fire to the place to cover his tracks. Fortunately for us, the fire didn't destroy the body as you planned."

"I didn't plan anything! I didn't do it!"

"Right. Because you were busy returning some of your former girlfriend's clothes."

From the corner of his eye he sees Holmes pivot abruptly toward the stairwell. "We're done here," he calls back over his shoulder. Catching Marcus' eye, Joan shrugs slightly and follows.

"You want to tell me what you found?" Marcus says when he catches up with Holmes on the top of the landing.

"Absolutely nothing," Holmes says. "Except that he's lying about returning something to the apartment but telling the truth about not murdering anyone."

"You realize that's not particularly helpful information," Marcus says, frowning. Anyone else might bristle at the sleight but Holmes twitches his shoulders like someone brushing off a fly.

"Not yet," he says. "But it may be, in time."

He heads toward the elevator and Joan says, "We'll let you know if we find anything else. You want to come grab some dinner with us? It's getting late, and there's a new diner I've wanted to try."

"Thanks," Marcus says, "but I have an errand I need to run."

As soon as the elevator swallows them up, Marcus checks out and heads to the garage where his car is parked. Fishing his phone from his pocket, he dials his brother Andre. The phone rings for a few times before he picks up—and then Marcus has to strain to hear over the noise of some machinery.

"You still at work?" he shouts into the phone. "You guys are keeping long hours."

Andre laughs—a rare enough sound that Marcus finds himself smiling, too. Andre's new job is nothing glamorous—part of an outside lawn crew—but he seems to love it. Or at least to love not being shackled to a short order grill frying burgers all day.

"You'd be surprised how many trees there are in New York," he told Marcus once. "And grass and bushes and flowers—and they all need attention. What more could I want—steady work and fresh air!"

"Yeah, well, you might not be so happy come January."

"Wrong," Andre had pronounced with certainty. "I love cold weather."

"Then tell me again how you love trimming hedges in July."

Andre had slapped him on the back then, the way he sometimes had when they were kids. The slap was both affectionate and dismissive, the kind of touch older brothers employed to keep their younger siblings in check. Marcus rolled his eyes.

"Thought I'd meet you for dinner," Marcus shouts into the phone, but Andre tells him that he has to work late.

"Tree trimmer broke down," he says. "Miguel and I have it in pieces right now."

"Then I'll catch you later," Marcus says, closing the connection. He swings his car left at the next corner and heads directly to Andre's new apartment. Parking on the street is almost impossible, but a spot opens up as Marcus circles the second time around the block. Pulling a key from his pocket, he lets himself in—and then he begins to snoop.

He doesn't think of what he's doing as snooping—not exactly. As soon as he steps inside he takes a deep breath—something Holmes routinely does whenever he enters a room. No unusual scents. Nothing indicating anything was smoked here recently. Good.

A quick sweep through the tiny living area, then a check of Andre's drawers in his bedroom. Nothing there that shouldn't be there. Marcus takes another deep breath and scans the kitchen. Not much in the fridge—some soft drinks and a half-eaten prepared casserole. Not a single vegetable and only one plum. As he locks the apartment door behind him, Marcus makes a mental note to stop by in a day or two with some healthier groceries.

He tells himself what he always tells himself—that he's doing this for Andre's own good, that when he's certain that Andre is really and truly settled—with a steady job and friends who won't try to steer him on the rocks—he'll stop making these occasional look-arounds. But after all, trust has to be earned, right?

In the meantime, he just wants to keep his brother safe, even if that means doing things that would make Andre furious if he found out.

XX

The new diner is a disappointment—too expensive and pretentious for the neighborhood, tiny portions fussed over unnecessarily. Meatloaf made with foie gras? Seriously?

"Why go to the bother of decorating a restaurant like a diner if you're going to serve upscale cuisine?" Joan asks, picking at a scant cabbage and kale salad.

Sherlock has been quieter than normal all afternoon, ever since Marcus met them at the burned apartment to show them around. "You okay?" Joan says. "You haven't said much."

"Thinking," Sherlock says.

"About?" she prompts. He scowls at her but says, "Why would Steven Smith just happen to be at the apartment of his ex-girlfriend the day her current boyfriend is murdered? The reason he gave was patently false, but why lie?"

"Because he's embarrassed about his real reason," Joan says. "Maybe Marcus was right and he's a stalker. Maybe he hasn't been able to move on and he's keeping an eye on her."

"What would be the point? She's made clear their relationship is over."

Lifting her fork, Joan says, "People do irrational things all the time. If he loves her, he might have trouble letting her go."

She sees Sherlock's expression flicker and she knows he's thinking of Irene.

They eat in silence for a few minutes, Joan idly watching the cook behind the counter assembling a piece of cake on a decorated plate. As the waitress starts to pick it up, the cook adds a birthday candle and lights it. Sherlock lifts one eyebrow and says, "What can we deduce from that?"

He says it with forced good humor, as if he is determined to be better company. It's touching, this attempt to mimic normal social behavior, like watching a child practicing some tricky skill doomed to frequent falls, like roller skating or riding a bike. Shaking Mason's shoulder, for instance, while he ran tests on the box the banned stock trader Colin Eisley planned to splice into the transatlantic fiber optic cable dubbed Ruby. Or the three times Joan has seen Sherlock smile recently—brief, awkward flashes of his teeth after asking a favor from someone.

They watch as the waitress carries the cake to a booth where a man sits with a small girl. Divorced dad taking his daughter to a meal on her birthday, Joan thinks.

"It must be hard," she says aloud. Sherlock cocks an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. "That father. Who takes a kid out for birthday cake alone? A father who doesn't get to see her every day."

She puts her fork down and looks again at the little girl eating the cake. Something clicks and Joan sits up.

"The kids," she says. "Steven Smith was there to see the kids. It might not be his girlfriend he's missing but the kids. He drives by to keep an eye on them—he probably took care of them if their mother has always worked second shift. Maybe he doesn't trust this new guy to be their caregiver. That's why he was in the apartment building that day,"

"That doesn't rule him out as a murder suspect," Sherlock says. "In fact, it gives him more motive, if he believed New Boyfriend was harming the children in some way."

"But the kids backed up his story. In the report, they said they heard Smith break in the door right before he took them from the burning apartment."

Sherlock taps the counter, musing. "They _are_ young. They could be confused."

Their waitress appears and takes their plates. "Coffee?" she asks, but both Joan and Sherlock shake their heads.

"Let's say that Smith is telling the truth," Joan says. "He had to break down the door to get in, and he took the children outside right away. The M.E. said that the new boyfriend died from blood loss from the nick to his carotid, not from the fire. He would have already been dead by the time Steve Smith arrived. Could someone else inside the apartment have killed him and then escaped from a window?"

"The apartment has a nominal fire escape at best. I checked. It has not been engaged in so long that the hinges are rusted. No one left that way."

"Could the killer have been inside the apartment until after Steve Smith took the children out? Then he could have left through the door."

Sherlock's tapping on the counter increases. "Possible, though by then the neighbors were in the foyer. No one reported a stranger except Smith exiting the building."

Once between her junior and senior year of college, Joan had caught a ride home from Ann Arbor to New York with a girl she knew from an advanced biology class. Halfway through the ten-hour trip—somewhere outside Youngstown—Joan looked across the flat prairie horizon and saw a dark gray funnel cloud reaching down from an ominous sky. For several heart-stopping minutes she'd watched as the tornado raced toward them, leaped over the highway in front of them, and then sped away, skipping and bobbing like something alive.

Both she and the driver wept and laughed in equal measure for a quarter of an hour, their car pulled into the median as they gathered their wits and said, over and over again, how lucky they were to be alive.

The rest of the drive was euphoric, every other pleasurable moment in her life held up to it later and found wanting. The tornado became a touchstone of sorts, a yardstick to pull out whenever she needs perspective on what she's feeling.

Sitting in the diner with Sherlock, waiting for the check, becomes such a moment. With the clarity of mind that sometimes makes her physically shiver with pleasure, Joan says, "I know what happened. New Boyfriend killed himself."

Sherlock stops his tapping and leans forward slightly.

"He didn't mean to, of course. I don't know why I didn't think about it before," Joan says, almost breathless in her hurry, "but I saw something similar back when I was a resident. A guy was cooking over the stove, a knife in one hand, and he reached for a hot frying pan. He didn't know it was hot and he jerked his hand back, stabbing himself. In that case the guy didn't die, but he did give himself a nasty cut on the chest."

"It would also explain the source of the fire," Sherlock chimes in. "I noticed a definite grease residue on part of the counter and wall, as if a pan had been lifted and then suddenly dropped, splashing grease."

"There were pans on the floor," Joan says, "but I assumed the fire fighters knocked them down when they put out the fire."

"That doesn't mean that one of them wasn't already on the floor after being dropped by New Boyfriend."

"It should be easy enough to prove," Joan adds. "Now that we know what to look for, we can measure the length and angle of the wound and tell whether or not New Boyfriend was holding the knife that stabbed him."

She knows she sounds triumphant. Sherlock flashes his teeth—a slightly more successful facsimile of a smile than his other recent attempts.

That night after she settles in bed—after Marcus reports back that the M.E.'s findings corroborate her theory, after Steven Smith admits that he's been keeping a surreptitious patrol over his ex-girlfriend's children, after he's been released and sent home—she stretches out and allows herself a moment of self-congratulation. As much as she once thought she'd always miss the thrill of surgery and the satisfaction of helping patients, this is just as thrilling. An innocent man is free tonight because she put all the pieces together. In the dark she smiles like the proverbial Cheshire cat.

Hours later she wakes suddenly. Without opening her eyes, she knows that Sherlock is standing in her doorway. Some slight scuff of his shoe, some alteration in the flow of the air, some unknowable something alerts her when he's watching her.

He won't stay long. Sometimes he's there less than a minute. She should probably mind but doesn't. In some ways it makes her feel safe, knowing she is watched over so closely. He needs this—and as she feels herself drifting back to sleep, she thinks about how she does, too.

**A/N: My attempt to explain...and perhaps justify, as much as it can be...Sherlock's penchant for waking Watson. Thanks for reading.  
**


	6. Captain Gregson

**Chapter Six: Captain Gregson**

**Disclaimer: Not for profit, sadly.**

"Thanks for seeing me. I wasn't sure you'd want to."

Hannah Gregson gives her coffee an unnecessary stir—a sign, if Joan needed one, that she's anxious. Looking across the coffee shop table, Joan says, "We're good, okay? I'm always available if you need me."

She means it. Hannah has said more than once that she knows she screwed up, that she should have taken the information about the narcotics ring Joan uncovered to the detective on the case instead of being a credit hound. That she told her father right away and owned up to her mistake to him as well makes Joan hopeful that, even if Hannah doesn't prove to be the most insightful investigator, she's on track to be a more effective beat cop.

Hannah nods and lifts her cup to take a sip. "It's not about work," she says, darting a glance at Joan. "I mean, it is, sort of." She pauses a second and then adds, "It's my dad."

For a moment Joan is too startled to react. "Is something wrong?"

"He's drinking again," Hannah says. "I mean, really drinking. Enough for people to start noticing."

Mentally Joan clicks through the last few conversations she's had with the Captain. Except for looking a little tired, he hadn't seemed different. She says so.

Hannah tips her chin down. "Two nights ago there was a retirement party for Lance Inhoff, one of the detectives at the 16th. He used to work at the 11th."

"Yeah," Joan says, "Sherlock and I were invited. We've worked several cases with Inhoff. We couldn't get to the party."

Not couldn't but wouldn't. The party had been at a popular bar in SoHo, and although Sherlock encouraged her to go without him, she hasn't felt much like celebrating anything lately. Instead, they'd spent a quiet evening at the brownstone reading old case files in companionable silence.

"I didn't get there until late." Hannah takes another sip of her coffee. "As soon as I walked in, I could hear Dad. He was yelling, laughing. Not just loud, but over-the-top-almost-out-of-control loud. Drunk loud."

Joan shrugs. "Just because he drank too much at a party—"

"That's not the only time. Last week my sister was home on winter break and Mom invited Dad over for a meal one night. I mean, I knew it might be tense anyway, but he'd been drinking before he got there. He and Mom got into a nasty argument right away and he left. It was awful."

Joan feels an almost electric stab of sadness. "I'm sorry," she says. "I know the divorce has been hard on everyone."

"Yeah," Hannah says, setting her cup down carefully. "I still can't really get my head around it. But it is what it is. Right now I'm more concerned about the drinking. I stopped by his place Sunday morning and I could smell the booze. Sunday _morning._ Dad's always been a social drinker, but this is something different. "

"What does he say when you talk to him about it?"

"He won't talk to me," Hannah says with a bitter smile. "Not about this. He says I'm imagining things."

"Do you think you might be?"

Hannah jerks her head up. "No! I know a drunk when I see one. He has a problem, okay?"

Joan sighs and settles back in her chair. Despite their little kerfuffle a couple of months ago, she genuinely likes Hannah. And she likes and respects the Captain. Being caught between them this way is more than a little uncomfortable.

"You could suggest he go to an AA meeting," Joan says.

Hannah grimaces. "Baring his soul to the public that way? I don't think so."

"I can get you the names of some good counselors," Joan says, "that he could see privately, but unless he wants help—"

"Actually," Hannah says, leaning forward, "that's where I thought you might be able to help. Dad will listen to you. I'm his kid. What do I know? But you used to work with addicts, right? That's your territory. If _you_ suggest he go for counseling, he might do it."

"This is really awkward." Joan's stomach knots up. If she herself had witnessed the Captain having trouble it would be one thing, but she's going solely on Hannah's word. Not that Joan doubts her, but she doesn't want to jeopardize her relationship with the Captain on hearsay only. Speaking to him—to anyone—about a perceived addiction is a tricky matter. He will feel she is crossing a line. A veritable Rubicon, Sherlock might say, and he would be right.

"Look, Hannah," Joan says, the tone of her voice giving her away before her words do, "I don't think I can help you with this. That's something you need to do."

Hannah closes her eyes briefly and places her hands, palms down, on the table. "I understand," she says. "I get that you have a professional relationship with my dad and this goes beyond that."

Joan lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Thank goodness Hannah seems to understand her predicament.

"But I'm desperate," Hannah adds, and Joan takes another deep breath. "If this keeps up—if it gets out of control—it could affect his job. You don't know what it's like watching your dad making seriously bad choices, how helpless it feels not to be able to do anything to help him."

Hannah isn't weepy or wavering. She looks Joan right in the eye, unblinking, her pain all the more evident for her bravado.

The last time Joan saw her own father was more than six months ago at a church basement soup kitchen. It's one of three she knows he visits, so she does, too, dropping in every week or so when they are serving meals and looking for him. That last time he had seemed frailer than she remembered, his hair in need of trimming, his careworn clothes smelling strongly of urine. He recognized her, something that isn't always true, but he seemed embarrassed as well. She sat with him while he ate a silent meal and then watched him hitch up his beltless pants and shuffle down the steps of the Lowery Street subway station, his hand motioning her back.

"I gotta go," he said over his shoulder. "Don't follow me."

For a moment she stood frozen in place—the crowd parting around her at the subway entrance. By the time she reached the bottom of the steps, her father had disappeared.

"If he weren't my dad—" Hannah says.

Joan reaches across the table and lets her right hand rest on Hannah's. "I'll talk to him," she says. "I can at least do that much."

X

Tommy Gregson still goes by his childhood nickname—not Thomas or Tom but Tommy, a boy's name that feels as comfortable as an old shoe. At some level he knows it makes him more approachable. When he'd been promoted to Captain he'd toyed with the idea of going by his middle name—Tobias—but more than one person had blinked and stuttered when he'd introduced himself that way, so he resigned himself to always being Tommy. Less pretentious, but also a bit of a useful tool, suggesting, as it does, someone trustworthy. A friendly name for a friendly person.

Except that lately he hasn't felt very friendly. Even at work he's been focused like a laser, keeping longer hours than usual, rarely leaving any unfinished paperwork until morning.

Not that he'd ever kept reasonable hours, to hear Cheryl tell it, but now that he's living on his own, there's really no reason to hurry back to a stuffy apartment and sit, a beer in one hand, the remote control in the other, until bedtime.

Or more recently, not one beer but three, or bourbon when he remembers to buy a fifth at the corner liquor store. Nothing wrong with a drink now and then, as long as he keeps it in house. That thought heats up his collar—the vague memory of someone shushing him at the party for Inhoff the other night—a couple of cryptic comments the next day about _tying one on_.

Today as he sits down at his desk, paper cup of coffee in hand, he sees through the slatted blinds Sherlock Holmes rounding the corner. Most mornings he's glad enough to see Holmes—or more precisely, glad for his help. The man himself can test the Captain's patience.

The first time he ever saw Holmes in action—during an exchange program in London after 9/11—he watched as Holmes zigzagged across the scene of a violent crosswalk mugging, stopping briefly to squint at a tree before turning on his heel and pacing, arms out like a zombie, back across the road.

"Potty," one of the constables directing traffic muttered. At the time, Gregson had agreed with him, but when Holmes came up with the name and address of the attacker a few hours later, he was less skeptical. By the time his stay in London was up, Tommy Gregson was as much of a fan of Sherlock Holmes as anyone could be.

Not that Holmes doesn't drive him crazy. A bundle of twitches and sudden swerves, his chin tilted up as he proclaims some discovery or the other, his comings and goings not always announced with anything resembling a social grace.

"He gets results," Gregson has said more than once to exasperated detectives. "Bear with me here."

Fortunately, Marcus Bell has developed a thick enough skin to work with Holmes more often than not. Bell is no fool. He knows he owes a great deal to Holmes—and perhaps even more to Joan. Lord help her. The woman is a saint.

Holmes doesn't wait for Gregson to invite him in his office. Opening the door wide, he steps through before saying, "Captain? A word, if I might?"

Holmes' face is unreadable. A cold case he wants to pursue? Some oddball request to divert resources? Holmes and Joan aren't working an active investigation at the moment. Suppressing a sigh, Gregson waves him in.

Holmes perches on the chair opposite the desk, his spine straight. Thirty seconds pass in silence, then a minute. Gregson is determined to wait him out, but when another minute passes, he gives in.

"You said you wanted to see me."

"I am considering how to proceed," Holmes says. "The matter is a…delicate one."

To Gregson's astonishment, Holmes looks almost flustered. Sherlock Holmes—for once the person in the room discomfited by something. The idea makes Gregson smirk.

"Maybe you should just be your usual diplomatic, sensitive self," Gregson says. He struggles not to let the smirk blossom into a full-blown grin. Holmes rewards him with a frown.

"You're joking," he says, "but that may, in fact, be good advice. I have been tasked with giving you information that you will, no doubt, find difficult to hear. Indeed, that is why I am here and not Watson. She was the original purveyor of this bad news but I insisted that the job was best left to me."

"Because you are better at everything," Gregson says, one eyebrow raised. "Including giving bad news."

"Giving _this_ bad news," Holmes corrects him.

Gregson leans back and crosses his arms. "You know, when you hightailed it back to London a while back, Joan did just fine without you. _We_ did fine without you. You might be interested to know that the world doesn't fall apart when you're not around."

"You misunderstand me," Holmes says, the slightest note of irritation in his voice. "I was not, in any way, disparaging Watson's abilities. I am well aware that she is an excellent detective, as well as having many other skills. Her medical knowledge is vast, as is her—"

"You said you had bad news," Gregson says. "I don't have all day. Maybe you should just tell me what you came to say?"

"Captain, you know I have the highest regard for you—"

"Holmes—"

"Very well. You may need an addiction counselor, or a twelve-step program if you prefer."

"What?"

"Your drinking. It is getting out of control. Your daughter reports seeing you drunk on multiple occasions. While I cannot corroborate her accounts, I do not doubt them. Your clothes have, from time to time, smelled of alcohol, though your breath has not. It's not unreasonable to assume that, although you are not drinking before coming to work, you are drinking afterwards, probably at a bar on the way home. The smell of cigarettes. It's in your clothes as well, and I know you do not smoke."

Gregson is aware that his mouth is open. He snaps it shut and swallows.

"So I get a drink on the way home sometimes. That's not a crime. But I have not been drunk. Hannah told you that? I'll have a talk with her."

"She spoke out of concern. If I were to interview the other participants at Detective Inhoff's party, would they agree with her that you'd had too much to drink that night?"

"One night!" Gregson says. A detective walking past the office looks toward the window and the captain lowers his voice. "It was a party. People drink at parties."

"I won't insult your intelligence by reminding you that drinking and getting drunk are, for most people, two different activities."

"And yet you just did. Insulted me and reminded me."

"As you are well aware, Captain, I struggle with my own addiction issues. For me—for other addicts—there is no separation between drinking and drunk, between recreation and overuse. The same may be true for you. Consider this: your daughter reports that on a Sunday morning she came by your apartment and found you already deep in your cups. Your voice was slurred, your reaction time slowed, your affect hostile. If you were not drunk that day, how do you account for your behavior?"

"You're out of line."

"Indeed, I'm often told as much. By Watson, usually."

"Does Joan know you're here?"

"We agreed upon this course of action. In point of fact, we gave considerable thought to the best way to proceed."

Gregson feels his face flush and his heart thrum in his throat. "Once and for all, I do not have a problem with alcohol. I might have slipped up a couple of times recently but it's not a habit." He pauses and then says, "Things have been unsettled lately. But I don't have to drink. I can stop whenever I want."

He knows he's talking too loud again. He takes a deliberate breath and lets it out slowly. Mindfulness, Cheryl calls it—that ability to set aside the annoyances around him. He's failing at it miserably. "I appreciate your concern, but like I said, I don't have a problem. Hannah's mistaken."

He can tell from his expression that Holmes doesn't believe him, but he's too angry to care. The man doesn't know everything. Nobody does.

"Captain," Holmes says, getting to his feet, "for quite some time I was also in denial that I had a problem. And even when I did admit it, I did not think that I needed help. I was wrong. Coming to terms with that saved my life. I would not speak so frankly to you now if I didn't think you, too, could profit from the same kind of self-knowledge. The people who care about you are worried—your daughter, Watson, myself. I owe a great deal of my recovery to you—to the trust you placed in me, allowing me to consult for the NYPD. If you ever wish me to return the favor, I am at your disposal."

"Thanks," Gregson says, not sounding grateful at all. "But I'm good."

Holmes pivots and lurches to the door, not looking back. Gregson kneads a knotted muscle in his neck and opens a desk drawer, looking for something for a growing headache. It's going to be a long day.

X X

"Your maths teacher said your grade has fallen this quarter."

Sherlock stands at the gym locker room door watching Teddy wiping down his boxing gloves. From the little bit of sparring that he witnessed, Teddy is improving rapidly, at least in athletics. Academics, apparently, are another matter.

"You checked up on me!" Teddy says, draping his hand towel around his neck.

"I might have done," Sherlock says. "I am, as far as the school is concerned, your father, remember?"

"Oh, right," Teddy says, flashing a grimace. "I forgot about that. So, Pops, you offering to help me with my calculus homework?"

"I am doing no such thing. Your maths studies have already taken you beyond my purview. However, I do know an excellent math professor, one of my regular consultants. I can contact him if you need a tutor."

"I'm okay," Teddy says, packing the rest of his equipment in his athletic bag. "My grade dropped because of one test, that's all."

"You failed a test?"

"I missed it. Teacher wouldn't let me make it up."

Teddy doesn't meet his eye. He's dodging something.

"Students at your school are not allowed to make up missed work when they are absent?"

Teddy sighs and says, "Students at my school aren't allowed to make up missed work when they cut class. A buddy and I cut class that day."

Teddy slips his arms through the athletic bag straps and makes his way across the gym toward the front door. A gifted student, impatient with rules and authority, reminding Sherlock of himself as a teenager.

A group of passing boys yell out something, obviously in jest, and Teddy makes a phantom swing in their direction. A popular boy—a friend to his peers. Perhaps he and Sherlock are not so much alike after all.

"I know I shouldn't have skipped," Teddy says, "but I had a good reason."

He blinks in the bright sunlight as they stand on the sidewalk outside the gym.

"Which was?" Sherlock prompts, and Teddy stabs one toe against a raised edge of the sidewalk.

"Went to hear a lecture about dark matter by this hotshot astrophysicist. I've seen him on TV. Thought it would be cool to see him in person. Didn't know when I'd get another chance."

"You went to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson at the Brooklyn Museum? He was there last week."

"You heard of him?" Teddy says, a note of surprise in his voice. "He's my man."

This changes things considerably. Not only was Teddy _not_ doing what Sherlock had assumed at first—resurrecting his old scam artist routine in the park, hustling clueless businessmen and liberating their phones and wallets, he was doing something of more educational value than sitting inert in a desk in a dreary classroom.

"Well done," Sherlock says. "Time well spent, the failed calculus test notwithstanding." Lifting his hand tentatively, he adds, "I could speak to your teacher if you like? Explain how unreasonable she's being not to let you take the missed test."

Teddy is silent a moment as if considering the offer. Then he shakes his head. "Naw, I'm good."

They part ways at the corner, but not before Teddy calls out, "Tell _Mom_ I said hi."

It's Watson's day to have lunch with her mother. The brownstone feels as it always does when she's away, oddly empty, though not as empty as it did during the interim after Kitty left before Watson returned. Sherlock had been keenly, uncomfortably aware of the echo of his own footfalls on the wooden floors then. The air was stale, the dust motes undisturbed by any motions other than his own. His life had been orderly and clear, like a painting done with such precision that it appears flat and lifeless.

A life like the one the Captain is experiencing at present. That he's turning to drink is no surprise.

He and Watson talked about it last night when she shared the conversation she'd had with Hannah.

"You're worried that discussing this with Captain Gregson will affect your relationship negatively," Sherlock had said matter-of-factly. Watson opened her mouth to dispute that—and then visibly changed her mind, her expression softening, something she does more often than most people Sherlock knows. A flexible thinker—willing to step around her assumptions and look at them from another point of view. It's a trait he both admires and values in her.

"I _know_ it will," she said. "He's going to be upset with Hannah for saying something to me and embarrassed when I say something to him. But it can't be helped."

"Perhaps it can," Sherlock told her. Watson turned her gaze on him and he felt, as he often did, that she already knew what he was going to say. "I should be the one to approach the Captain. My history gives me more credence in this matter, Watson, not that you wouldn't be persuasive, but my experience with the demon of addiction makes me the better spokesperson. Not only that, but I don't mind upsetting the Captain, and you do. That alone is difference enough to make the task my own."

Again he saw Watson preparing to debate him, and again he watched her expression alter as she thought better of it.

"Actually," she said, her voice low and oddly troubled, "that would be a big help."

"Consider it done, then," Sherlock said. Watson's shoulders came down from around her ears. She gave an audible sigh.

"I'm heading to bed," she said, tugging the elastic from her ponytail and setting her hair free. "See you in the morning."

He stood in the hallway and watched her ascend the stair, her hair cascading around her shoulders. He'd told her once that her belief that she was more attractive with her hair pulled back was incorrect, that either way was aesthetically pleasing. A draw, he'd called it.

At the time she'd looked at him askance—which he now knows is not because she hadn't believed him but because she didn't yet trust him, two different things entirely. His observation wasn't wrong but merely offered prematurely, before they had whatever this is they have now.

As she disappeared into the gloom at the top of the stairs he checked his original assessment. Hair back or down makes no difference. Either way he always gets a little hitch in his breathing when he sees her.

**A/N: No mystery to solve in this one, but hopefully you enjoyed it anyway. Thanks for letting me know!**


	7. Medical Examiner Hawes

**Chapter Seven: Medical Examiner Hawes**

**Disclaimer: IMLTHO, you know everything I would say here already.**

Stephen Hawes absently twiddles his wedding band. Or tries to. Lately his fingers are too swollen for his ring to turn easily. Not swollen, exactly, but thick. Heavy. _Fat._

There it is, the word. "You're getting fat," Sandi said last night, giving him a dismissive peck on the cheek before she turned over in the bed and pulled the covers up over her shoulder. "Why do you bother to pay a monthly fee to the gym if you never go?"

He'd been too startled to say anything.

Lately he's often at a loss of words with her. "I'm going to meet up with the girls for dinner anyway," she'll say when he calls to let her know he's working late. As if his absence doesn't bother her at all, as if she's going on with her life without him.

It might have been different if they'd had children. He knows couples who exist solely for their children. Not ideal, but it's a connection, a thread that keeps them tied together through the rough patches.

Or at least that's how it often appears to him. He does have friends who broke up because the stress of having children was unsurmountable.

At any rate, it's too late now. Not physically—not biologically—but now that Sandi has left her job on disability and the medical examiner's office is short-handed, he can't picture the kind of disruption having a child would create.

If there isn't more disruption going on that he doesn't know about. The recurring unknown phone number on Sandi's phone bill. The times he tries to text or call her but she says her phone must have been off.

He absently rubs his ring again. Focus. Back to the problem at hand.

The problem is a _he_, an unidentified Asian male, age unknown, though Hawes guesses mid-70s. The wear on his teeth suggests a life lived hard. The fact that he died in a homeless shelter supports that idea.

Hawes adjusts the earpiece of his recorder. "Advanced atherosclerosis. Cause of death ischemic stroke, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Trace amounts of olanzapine."

The antipsychotic meds suggest schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Impossible to know for certain—the limits of forensic pathology. Not for the first time, Hawes is aware that the living are more revealing than the dead. An hour with this man when he was alive would probably have been enough to gauge his mental condition. One day, researchers will map definite brain markers for mental illnesses, but until that time, an autopsy is like a child's coloring book—an outline or a sketch only partially scribbled in.

Finishing his report, Hawes starts to roll the unidentified man back to the cold chamber when he hears Joan Watson's voice behind him.

"Sorry I'm late."

He pauses and turns to watch her descending the ramp.

"No Holmes today?"

"He's working," Joan says. She meets Hawes' gaze and adds, "And I wanted to come alone. You know, in case—"

She hesitates and Hawes raises his eyebrows in understanding. A year ago she'd confided that her father was homeless, a schizophrenic often off his meds.

"I try to keep tabs on him," she had said then, her voice cracking, "but I don't always know where he is. The last time I saw him I'm pretty sure he didn't have a wallet or any ID with him."

She had started to say something else and then faltered.

"I'll keep an eye out," Hawes offered, and she nodded, grateful.

Yesterday when this John Doe had been brought in by the guys at the 31st, Hawes debated whether or not to call. While the odds were against this being her father, the odds were good that having to come to the morgue to find out would upset her.

On the other hand, if this were her father, she deserved to know. Otherwise she'd keep looking for him. At least she might find some peace of mind.

Joan crosses the distance and looks down at the man on the gurney. As he always does, Hawes appreciates how controlled Joan is—her movements deliberate and purposeful. No nonsense, like most surgeons he knows. But graceful too, as if she studied to be a dancer.

Realizing he is staring at her, Hawes looks away.

"It's not him," Joan says at last. "But he does look familiar somehow, like I've seen him."

"The social worker at the shelter said he's a regular. He came in whenever it rained, and this past winter he was there most nights. Maybe you saw him when you were visiting your dad."

Joan steps closer to the gurney. "No, that's not it. I'll figure it out eventually."

Hawes motions to the counter where the man's clothes and personal effects are labeled and ready for storage. "Have a look," he says. "There might be something useful there."

He doesn't tell her that he's already gone through everything twice. A worn pair of jeans, an off-brand flannel shirt, a pair of undershorts more holes than fabric, and black canvas slip-ons are stacked together. To the side he has put the contents of the man's jean's pocket—a folded newspaper article and a book of matches.

Joan unfolds the scrap of newspaper. "This looks like it could be from the World Journal," she says. "It's the largest Chinese language newspaper in this country. My mother reads it occasionally."

"Any idea why John Doe would carry a piece of it around? Can you read it?"

Joan peers at the paper. "Don't tell my mother, but I'm a little rusty. It looks like an op-ed about the mayor's decision to charge rent to charter schools. Wish the byline hadn't been cut off. We could tell which paper this is."

"So our man stayed on top of current events," Hawes says.

Joan fishes her phone from her pocket and takes a picture of the piece of paper. "I'll get my mother to take a look. Maybe there's a clue here." She fingers the book of matches. "These are from an upscale restaurant in Tribeca. Anyone at the 31st looking into why he might have been there recently?"

"I doubt it," Hawes says as he opens the drawer to the cold chamber and wheels the man in. "No ID. Homeless. No crime. They have other things to run down instead of looking for who this guy might be."

"I can poke around a little bit," Joan says. "See if I can turn anything up."

Hawes shifts from one foot to the other, debating whether to ask what he's considered for several weeks now. If Holmes were here he'd never do it, but since Joan is alone—

"I wonder if you'd do me another favor," he says. His face is hot from embarrassment, but he's determined to press on. "Uh, maybe a cup of coffee first? In my office?"

X X X

As soon as she opens the front door she hears Sherlock bellowing for her. The sharp tattoo of his shoes follows immediately and by the time she hangs up her jacket, Sherlock stands three feet away like a soldier on parade.

"I expected you much earlier." An accusation of sorts—she hears the peevishness in his voice.

"I told you I had to run an errand," she says, picking up the mail he's set on the side table. "And then a friend asked me to have coffee with him."

"You've been to the morgue." A statement, flat and also slightly accusatory. He's miffed that she went without him. "Your clothes smell faintly of formalin."

Putting down the mail, she sighs. "Okay, I went there because Dr. Hawes wanted my help identifying someone."

"Explain."

"A man died of a stroke in a homeless shelter. An Asian man. Dr. Hawes thought he might be my father."

From the corner of her eye she sees Sherlock react. If she hadn't been looking for it, she would have missed it—a flare of his nostrils, his eyes narrowing.

"And?"

"Well, he wasn't my father, but you already knew that. He did have a couple of things in his pocket I thought I'd check out."

She shows him the pictures of the newspaper and the matchbook.

"I applaud your industry," Sherlock says. "A good detective stays busy honing her skills even when the criminal element is unusually quiescent. And boredom can be the most insidious villain of all."

"Actually," Joan says, "that's what I want to talk to you about—helping me with a little investigation while we're between cases."

"The Asian man's identity."

"No, this is something else."

Sherlock purses his lips. "Watson, you know my feelings about domestic surveillance. The moral travails of those foolish enough to link their shared fortunes in legal marriage concern me not at all. If Dr. Hawes suspects his wife is unfaithful—"

Joan lets out a raspberry of exasperation. "How did you know that!"

"Isn't it obvious? You've been to the morgue. Dr. Hawes works the first shift during the week, so he's there today. You said you had coffee with a friend afterwards, but you smell too strongly of chemicals not to have come directly from the morgue itself. Ergo, you had coffee there with Dr. Hawes. In the year and a half that we have worked with the good doctor, he has never once offered us coffee—or any beverage for that matter, so his doing so now suggests he wanted to ask a favor. What favor might that be? Why, your services as a detective, naturally. At least twice when you and I were in his company lately, he's been preoccupied with text messages, none that left him in a noticeably happier mood. He fiddles with his wedding ring when he's agitated, a common tell of dissatisfaction in a marriage. Although marriages break down for numerous reasons, few of those require the services of a detective. Suspected affairs _do_, however, so the conclusion is a simple matter. Dr. Hawes wants you to find out if his wife is unfaithful."

Sherlock pauses to take a breath, something close to a triumphant gleam in his eye. Joan crosses in front of him and sits on the sofa.

"Okay, I get that you think such investigations are beneath you—"

"Not beneath _me_," Sherlock snaps. "Beneath _us_. I care not one iota about the marital status of Dr. Hawes. If he, on the other hand, had been the victim of a horrific crime, I would work tirelessly to bring the guilty party to justice. Marital infidelity, however, is not a horrific crime."

"A judgment you are unqualified to make," Joan says, smarting at his smugness. Her step-father's affair damaged her family in ways that still ripple.

Sherlock narrows his eyes at her again. She can see him coming to the same conclusion. "I concede your point, Watson," he says at last. "Your experience in this matter far outweighs mine."

"Don't worry," she says, still miffed. "I take back my request for your help. I can do this by myself. I'm sure you have plenty of other more interesting things to do."

She deliberately averts her gaze. _One, two, three, four. _Any time now—

"If you require my help," Sherlock says, "I am unoccupied at the moment."

Joan turns to look at him. "And boredom is the most insidious villain of all?"

"Just so. For an addict more than most."

She sighs. "It's not like I really want to spend my time following someone's possibly unfaithful spouse either, but Dr. Hawes is a friend. He asked for help and I want to give it."

"Define friend."

"Seriously?"

"You know me, Watson. When am I not serious?"

Joan rubs the back of her neck, feeling a muscle strain there. "We work with Dr. Hawes. He welcomes our help, and not every M. E. does."

"And that makes him your friend."

"Yes!" Joan says too emphatically. She lowers her voice and adds, "Not a good friend, but a friend. Someone we're friendly with." She sees Sherlock doing his version of an eye roll. "We're _work_ friends, okay? We value him."

"His favorite book?"

"What?"

"His favorite book? What is it?"

"I don't—"

"Or a food he enjoys? The type of coffee he drinks? His hobbies? Friends know these things."

"You're just saying that to argue that we shouldn't help him because he isn't a friend. But your definition is ridiculous. I have no idea what your favorite book is—"

"_Fifty Years Among the Bees_ by C. C. Miller."

"—or what you like to eat—"

"Bangers and mash. Cold cereal. _Som tam_, the spicier the better."

"—or your favorite coffee brand. Actually, I do know that one."

"You also know my hobbies and interests, Watson, or most of them. Indeed, you know me better than anyone, which is why you should know that I'm offering to help you—and by extension, Dr. Hawes."

Joan tries to relieve the strain in her neck by twisting her head from side to side. Sherlock should have been a debate coach, or an ancient philosopher antagonizing disbelievers in the agora. "You know you aren't making this easier, don't you?" she asks.

"He gave you his wife's schedule?" Now that he's on board, Sherlock sounds bossy and imperious. Already Joan regrets asking for his help.

"I have everything we need," she says. She pulls out a small moleskin notebook from her pocket and opens it. "Dr. Hawes' wife is named Sandi. Until a couple of months ago she was the office manager for a cardiology practice in Queens."

"Until a couple of months ago?"

"Had to quit," Joan says. "Dr. Hawes says she was in a car wreck three years ago. Hurt her back and never really recovered. She went on disability when she started missing more days than she was working. Now her schedule consists of physical therapy and doing charity work at a church soup kitchen."

"Should make her easy enough to surveille. You have a plan?"

"I'm meeting my mother to do some shopping this afternoon," Joan says. She tries to hide the concern in her voice. Her cousin Lou Ann is having a baby and her mother insisted they go together to purchase the shower gift.

"It's been so long since I had a baby in the house," her mother had said last night on the phone, "that I don't know what young parents need these days. You need to help me pick out something practical. Nice, but something they can use."

"You've had more experience with babies than I have," Joan protested. "I don't know how much help I can be."

But as they talked Joan realized that her mother might feel overwhelmed with the task for reasons having more to do with her faltering memory. Shopping might be too complex for her to navigate easily without some help. Joan had hung up the phone with a heavy heart and sense of foreboding that this sort of interference was going to become routine.

Sherlock watches her with the sort of intensity that sometimes makes her feel like a bug under a glass. "My mother seems to do better these days with a little help when she goes out," she says. Sherlock's head bobs once and Joan says, "And I thought I'd swing past Dr. Hawes' apartment on my way back. Get the lay of the land. See what's going on."

"Then bon voyage," Sherlock says. "Let me know when I can be of help."

X X X

"What are you doing up here? It's your turn to follow Sandi Hawes."

Watson's voice is equal parts surprise and annoyance. Sherlock angles his face away from her, as if he is studying the beehive intently. A breeze from the East River wafts over the rooftop, bringing the telltale scent of brine and diesel apparent during low tides. Watson, of course, will not be fooled by his attention to the bees, but this gives him an extra moment or two to prepare. He takes a breath and motions to the empty plastic chair beside him.

"I have done," he says. "Dr. Hawes does not need to fear a rival for his wife's affections. At least, not a human rival."

Watson scoots the chair close to his and sits. "What do you mean?"

"In the four days that we've observed her, she's hardly stirred beyond the boundaries outlined by Dr. Hawes. When she's not at home, she's at physical therapy around the corner from her apartment or at a soup kitchen in Brooklyn Heights, presumably to help serve meals to the homeless."

"What do you mean _presumably_?"

"Last night after Dr. Hawes sent you a text that his wife was having dinner with friends, where did she go?"

"To dinner with friends," Watson says. "I told you that. I saw her meet with two women at the café near the church where she volunteers in the soup kitchen. They checked out—old friends from her office. Why?"

"Dinner at Siggy's, a popular but nondescript vegetarian venue near First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn Heights."

"What's your point?"

"Sandi Hawes lives in Queens. Why not meet her friends for dinner somewhere closer to home?"

"Maybe her friends live in Brooklyn Heights. Maybe they're committed vegans who really like Siggy's."

It's this as much as anything that Sherlock values—Watson's swiftness of thought, her willingness to play the part of devil's advocate. The way they function as interactive sounding boards for each other, their ideas bouncing and rebounding until a solution leaps up.

"Or," he says, lifting one finger in the air, "she is a regular attendee of Narcotics Anonymous meetings at First Presbyterian Church. You said that after leaving Siggy's she went there."

Joan leans forward in her chair. "They have an evening soup kitchen on Thursdays. I assumed she was going there to volunteer."

"Did you follow her in?"

He sees a blush creep up Joan's neck and across her cheeks.

"I should have checked. I've seen her working the lunchtime crowd twice this week. I just assumed—"

"You made a reasonable assumption. However, her history made me suspicious."

Joan nods slowly. "Of course. The car wreck. She got addicted to pain killers afterwards."

"I made a visit to her former employer today. She was let go when she started helping herself to the drug rep medicine cabinet."

"But wouldn't Dr. Hawes know that? Why would she hide it from him? Even if she's embarrassed about using in the past, if she's going to meetings now, why wouldn't she tell her husband?"

"Embarrassment. Shame. An unwillingness to disappoint the person she loves most. A great reluctance to let him see her for who she really is. Or who she has become. Addiction resets the default, Watson. You are never not thinking about the gap between your sober self and who you truly are."

"But Dr. Hawes could be a support—"

"You and I know that, Watson. Not everyone does."

He's suddenly weary, as if a heavy weight has settled on his shoulders. His mind is a montage of moments when his resolve would have slipped if he hadn't had Watson in his life—a bottle of Vicodin at the home of Althea Theophilis, the packet of heroin tucked in the hollowed out book in the brownstone library—each time his hand stayed by the idea of Watson's disappointment with him.

The breeze picks up and Watson tugs her sweater closed. "If you're right—"

"I feel certain I am. Verifying it should be an easy matter."

"This raises a bigger question."

"Which is?"

"If Dr. Hawes' wife is going to NA meetings, do we tell him? He needs to know she's not being unfaithful to him. But we can't assure him of that without admitting what we know about where she's spending her time."

The recent unpleasantness when his own anonymity was compromised makes Sherlock take a deep breath. "Telling Dr. Hawes the truth could jeopardize his wife's recovery, as well, particularly if he takes the news badly." He waits a beat and adds, "Not to mention the issue of privacy. Set aside the fact that Dr. Hawes is your _friend_—and ask yourself whether violating his wife's privacy is in the best interest of either one."

Watson hunches forward, her arms tucked to her torso, but Sherlock is wearing no jacket to offer her. He starts to suggest that they go inside when she says, "So what should I do? What would _you_ do? I mean, she shouldn't keep this sort of secret from her husband. What kind of relationship is that?"

"Your judgment in such matters is far superior to my own, Watson. You could not find better counsel than yourself." He sees her brows knit, a frown flickering across her expression. "I'm sorry not to be more useful to you." He tests a half smile and says, "Perhaps in the other matter?"

Watson sits up and turns her face to him. The setting sun behind her illuminates the stray filaments of her hair like a halo.

"What matter?"

"The unidentified Asian man at the morgue. The one Dr. Hawes called you about."

Watson's expression grows sly. "Oh, that," she says, deliberately looking away. "I already figured that out. I called his son yesterday and he went to the morgue and claimed his father's body."

She leans back into the chair and crosses her arms, a pose she takes when she wants to be coaxed to talk. Two can play at this. _One, two, three, four_—but Watson is staring in continued silence as the lights of the skyscrapers across the river start to twinkle in the dusk.

"Are you going to explain how you discovered his identity?" Sherlock says at last.

Slowly Watson turns to look at him. "Isn't it obvious? The man—whose name is Lu Han, by the way—was carrying a matchbook from Macao Trading Company, an upscale restaurant specializing in fusion Chinese-Portuguese food. Even in New York, that's not a common pairing, but it happens to be a cuisine my mother knows well since she has relatives who live in Lisbon. I asked her if she had ever been to Macao Trading Company and it turns out she knows the owner. He said lots of journalists from the World Journal eat there regularly, so I called the paper and talked to several reporters before I spoke to Ha Han. He said he had lost contact recently with his elderly father. If you look at his photograph on the paper's website, you can see the resemblance. That's why Lu Han looked familiar to me. I must have seen his son's byline picture plenty of times."

By now the sun has slipped behind one of the distant buildings and Watson's face is in shadow. Although he can't see it, he's certain there's a look of anguish there.

"I'm sure his son was glad for your help." It's a vapid comment, and one that doesn't come close to communicating what he means to say.

What he means to say is that he's proud of her, and impressed, too, and grateful that she's here now, a bulwark against the despair that always threatens to swamp him. He should tell her these things—because relationships demand this sort of honesty, because it is what friends do.

One day, perhaps.

Instead, tonight he says, "_One Hundred Years of Solitude._ Your favorite book. I've seen you reading it multiple times."

And seen it splayed open on her bed where it slipped out of her fingers when she fell asleep, her table lamp still on until he quietly, quietly leaned down and turned it off.

**A/N: I solemnly swear to get back to having an actual case to let them solve in the next chapter! Thanks for being patient readers! And thanks for letting me know you are still out there!**


	8. Harlan Emple

**Chapter Eight: Harlan Emple**

**Disclaimer: No money, just fun.**

**(Set in the middle of S3, after Kitty departs but before the finale.)**

The knock at her office door is so soft that Joan thinks she must have imagined it. The honks and screeches and laughter and footfalls are a dull, unavoidable undercurrent of street noise—the biggest complaint about having an office in the basement of the brownstone.

Noise from overhead, of course, is another matter. More than once Joan has had to leave a mystified client as she excused herself, climbed up the stoop and let herself in the front door, only to see Sherlock doing some unnecessary gymnastics designed—she is certain, despite his protests to the contrary—to garner her attention.

Another knock—this time unmistakable knuckles on metal.

"Harlan!" she says, genuinely surprised as she pulls open the door. "If you're looking for Sherlock—"

Brushing past her, Harlan Emple moves quickly across the room and stands in front of the sofa. Tall and stocky, he looks more like a football running back than what he is, a brilliant mathematician.

"The Rachel B. Hanson Professor for Applied Mathematics at Columbia and the holder of the Smithfield Endowed Chair of Algebraic Geometry at Huntington Institute," Sherlock told her once. Joan had looked it up—not just his faculty page at Columbia but a definition of algebraic geometry, before she'd finally been able to think of Harlan the way Sherlock did, as a valuable _irregular regular_.

"I saw him already," Harlan said, his eyes darting up toward the ceiling. "He seems pretty—agitated. I thought I'd come talk to you instead."

"Oh," Joan says, squelching a grin. "He's just upset because it's his birthday. You know how it is. Hints of mortality—all that."

Harlan stares at her blankly, and after a moment, she motions for him to sit. He settles onto the sofa with the tentative grace Joan often sees in tall men—as if they have learned to move slowly in a world that is a little too confined.

"So," she says after the silence stretches on a beat too long, "did Sherlock ask you here?"

Harlan rubs his palms on his knees and shakes his head. "Uh, no. I came to see him. About a problem at work. Something came up that I want him to….investigate."

A muffled whump from overhead. Harlan darts a glance up at the ceiling.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

Another whump, this one louder.

"Do you need to check on…anything?" Harlan asks.

"You said it was something at work? At the university?" Joan says.

Harlan shoves his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "My exam in advanced calculus went missing about a week ago. Stolen, I'm pretty sure. I had a hard copy with me during the in-class review, and when I unpacked my briefcase later, it was gone."

Joan takes a breath and sits back. Just as well that Sherlock is too preoccupied to talk to Harlan today. He would have no patience with this sort of problem. "So make out a new exam," she says. "That should be easy enough to do."

Harlan lets out a blurp of exasperation. "Too late. I didn't discover the theft until after I gave the exam."

"Then interview the students with the best grades. Or talk to the ones whose scores are unexpectedly high."

"No, no," Harlan says, waving his hand. "I'm pretty sure I know who stole it."

Joan screws her face into a frown. "Then why—"

"One of my students stayed behind to talk to me after the review," Harlan says. "He's a weird kid. I mean, weirder than usual. Some days he's super bright—you know, his hand always in the air, answering questions before I can even ask them. Then other times he's, well, lost, or something. Like he doesn't have a clue what we are doing. Like he's never seen the stuff before."

"You think he's using drugs?"

"It would explain a lot."

"I don't understand what you want me to—"

"But there's other stuff, too," Harlan says. "Some days he comes to class dressed neatly, clean cut, his homework ready to turn in. Other days he looks like he's been on a bender all night."

"Maybe he has been. Or maybe he's mentally ill. Bipolar disorder can manifest this way."

"The strangest thing," Harlan continues as if he hasn't heard Joan, "is that he's almost like two people. Like looking in a mirror. When he parts his hair on the left, he's a math whiz. When he parts it on the right, he's a math dummy. He even writes with both hands. I asked him about it and he said he's always been ambidextrous."

Joan shifts in her seat. A noise like a slamming door echoes through the walls. "So you think this kid—"

"Elliot Small."

"—this kid, Elliot Small, stole the exam. So he aced it, right?"

"That's the thing," Harlan says. "He completely bombed it. Worst grade in the class."

"Maybe you're wrong about him stealing the exam."

"I don't think so," Harlan says, crossing his arms. "I remember having it on my desk after everyone else except Elliot left the room. Then I got distracted—or something—and the next time I thought about it, it was gone. He was the only student around when it went missing."

"Well, I don't know what you can do at this point," Joan says. "You can't prove anything, and if he did steal it, it didn't help him any."

"It's just," Harlan says, leaning forward, "something isn't right. There's a mystery here."

"Have you talked to him?"

Harlan shakes his head slowly. "No, the exam was the last day of the semester. Unless he takes another math class, I may never see him again."

Despite herself, Joan feels her attention starting to wander. There's not much she can do to help Harlan—and the mystery isn't that compelling.

Unlike the mystery of what Oren's up to. She sneaks a glance at her desk where she's spread out ten different mock up invitations to her mother's 70th birthday party. Mary Watson brought them by three days ago and handed them to Joan with a "Here. Help me choose one for the printer, and then make sure your brother has the date on his calendar."

Dutiful daughter that she is, Joan hadn't protested or asked why her mother couldn't talk to Oren herself. Since her mother's visit she's called Oren multiple times, always getting his voice mail. Likewise Joan hasn't been able to get in touch with his wife, Gabrielle. Her emails and texts seem to disappear into the ether.

Oren's silence is enough to feel, if not outright alarming, then at least unusual. Dutiful son that he is, Oren calls every couple of weeks unless he's traveling in a wildly different time zone. The odds that something has happened are remote—and yet Joan keeps circling around the mystery of his silence.

Unless, of course, he's snubbing her on purpose.

"Well," Joan says, turning her attention back to Harlan, slumped forward on the sofa, "since I can't be of any help—"

"There's just this one thing," Harlan says, and Joan stifles a sigh and sits back against her chair. "That day that Elliot stayed to get help after the review? He said something that I couldn't make sense of at the time, but now I wonder if someone was threatening him somehow."

"What do you mean?"

"He said that taking the exam was probably a lost cause now that his brother was mad at him. I didn't think too much about it—like I said, he's a weird kid. But after he failed the test, I remembered what he said, and I wondered if he was being mistreated. You know, bullied or frightened by his brother. Unable to study for the exam, maybe."

"Like he had an evil twin," Joan says, her words drifting to a stop. "An evil twin. That's it."

Harlan's face scrunches into a frown. "What do you mean?"

Joan launches into a lilting exposition. "Elliot is two people. Identical twins pretending to be the same student. In high school one of my friends was a mirror twin. She and her sister looked alike, but one was left-handed and the other right handed. One was really artsy and academic; her sister was an athlete who hated school. Their personalities were completely opposite. Elliot and his twin sound like mirror twins. Maybe Elliot doesn't really understand math and he called in his twin to be his ringer. You know, to take the tests for him. Then when they had a falling out, Elliot was driven to steal the exam but he didn't understand the concepts well enough to pass."

Harlan opens his mouth to respond but before he can, a crash directly overhead rattles the windows. Both Joan and Harlan jump up and head to the door.

"Is this…normal?" he says as Joan scoots ahead of him up the steps. Instead of answering, she swings open the door and heads through the foyer to the sitting room where Sherlock lies on the floor, his ankles still encased in gravity boots, the pieces of his inversion frame scattered around him.

"Sherlock!"

"Oh, good, you're here," he says, waving one arm. "I seem to have had a mishap."

For the next few minutes Joan clucks over a few scrapes and bruises while Harlan stacks the metal bar and broken frame pieces next to the wall.

"Be still," she instructs while swabbing a gash on Sherlock's shoulder. He complies—barely—but his attention keeps going to Harlan, who hovers at the edge of the action like someone deciding whether or not to put his toe into a pool.

"You have something to say?" Sherlock finally says. Harlan jumps visibly.

"Not really," he says. "I mean, I did have something to ask you, but Joan already figured out the answer."

At that Sherlock turns to look her squarely in the face.

"Turn around," Joan says, tearing another strip of medical tape and pressing it across a folded piece of gauze on Sherlock's shoulder. She rubs her finger idly across an old scar—the bullet wound from Moriarity's agent. At once his muscles become as taut as wire. "It wasn't anything," she says, adding a final piece of tape. "Not your cup of tea anyway."

"I should be the judge of that," Sherlock says, darting a look in her direction.

"Joan was really quite remarkable," Harlan says enthusiastically. Joan senses Sherlock tensing up again and she tries to catch Harlan's eye. Oblivious, Harlan recounts the story of his student and the missing exam, almost the same way he told it the first time.

"And then," Harlan says, "Joan made the most incredible deduction I've ever seen!"

"Mirror twins," Sherlock says. "Has to be."

"You heard us talking about it," Harlan says, disappointed. Sherlock snorts loudly.

'While I assure you my hearing is good," he says, slipping his arm through the sleeve of his shirt and buttoning it up, "I arrived at my deduction through logic alone. If you had been more attentive to your student's handwriting, you would have come to the same conclusion."

"Everyone has certain tells in their handwriting," Joan says. "Two different people would have two separate identifiable handwriting styles. Even if Elliot was trying to imitate his twin's handwriting, he wouldn't have been able to. At least not well enough to fool an expert."

To her surprise, Harlan lights up with a big grin. "But I'm not an expert! Not on handwriting! See, it's nice that we're a team again. All of us together—we're a complete package. You need a question about math, I'm your go-to guy. Like last week when Kitty sent me some equations to look at, I knew we were all working together again."

"Kitty? Sent you something?" Sherlock's voice is oddly flat, his expression unreadable. From where she stands, Joan sees his hand shake.

"Yeah," Harlan says. "The equations she thought were for weaponizing common household cleaners? But it was nonsense. Someone trying to make a buck selling fake information in Amsterdam."

"Amsterdam? She's there?" Again Joan sees Sherlock's hand shake—hardly more than a twitch, but she has noted and catalogued most of Shelock's ticks and twirls. This one is new.

Harlan throws his hands up. "I thought you knew. But she's not there now. Or, at least I don't think she is. She was headed to Berlin."

"Yes, of course I knew," Sherlock says, fastening his collar button and getting to his feet. "Now, if you will excuse me, I have something that needs attending to."

He heads to the steps and Harlan calls out, "Happy birthday!" Without missing a beat, Sherlock nods and disappears up the steps.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Like I said," Joan tells him, "birthdays make him moody. See you later."

XXX

By the time Harlan exits the brownstone, a fine misty rain has started. For the first block Harlan squinches his eyes and walks at a normal pace, droplets collecting on his forehead and sliding into his ears and down his neck. The subway stop is two blocks away when the misty rain turns into a genuine downpour. No cabs in sight—the streets almost empty of them this time of day. Across the street the lights of a tiny vegetarian café beckon and Harlan dashes in and waits for an indifferent waiter to lead him to a rickety wooden table and press a plastic menu in his hand.

"Uh, I don't want to eat," Harlan says, and immediately the waiter's indifference is replaced by irritation. For one wild moment Harlan expects him to scold him, or ask him to leave. "I mean," Harlan says, backpedaling frantically, "I could get some—" He glances down at the menu and looks for something recognizable. Kale and quinoa burger? Mate cooler? Lightly sautéed radicchio with toasted sesame seeds?

He's clearly out of his element, a fish out of water—a common sensation that still surprises Harlan at odd moments.

"Uh, what do you recommend?"

The waiter's irritation softens a fraction and Harlan's heart rate slows. He hates this, how other people's anger makes him fearful. Too close to home, too much like hearing his father all over again yelling, his disappointment in his only child palpable and wounding.

_Why can't you be like normal kids? Go outside and play. Stop bothering me!_

Harlan's mother so long dead that his only memory of her flickers like a stuttering black and white newsreel—her smile washing over him as a benediction, her fingers smoothing back his hair.

In many ways Sherlock reminds him of his father—not in appearance or in interests or even in personality, but in the sense that both men have something coiled inside them—something so tightly tuned that they almost vibrate, his father with anger, Sherlock with some emotion Harlan has no name for. He'd tried to talk to Kitty about it when she'd contacted him the first time, shortly after she left. She'd listened and said little, but before they hung up she'd told him, "You don't have to understand him, you know, to appreciate who he is."

At one time Harlan had entertained the idea that Sherlock Holmes might be a friend, but he knows better now. Not that Harlan's had many friends in his life. Curiously, his best friend in high school hadn't liked math at all, had teased Harlan about his love for numbers. Then in college he'd met people as obsessed as he was and he felt understood for the first time—or if not truly understood, than at least recognized as a fellow oddball. It had been liberating—but lonely.

After graduating a year early, Harlan did a half-hearted stint working as a data miner for a large retail company before jumping back into academia—earning a master's degree in applied mathematics before finishing his doctorate in algebraic geometry. Those had been busy years—and reasonably happy ones, although his father's declining health had been a worry.

Still is a worry, though Harlan rarely sees his father these days. If anything, old age and two heart attacks have made his father even more unpleasant, his anger tipping into rage whenever their phone calls go on too long and their conversations drift into politics.

It's not that Sherlock is like his father all that much, Harlan thinks, taking a tentative sip of the jasmine tea the waiter sets in front of him. Perhaps it isn't his father Sherlock reminds him of so much as it is himself, brilliant obsessives stumbling over everyone's toes, never quite sure about the steps of the dance. At the end of the day lonelier for it, too.

Except that Sherlock has Joan, and more than his obvious money, more than his lumbering brownstone, more than gifted insight, what Harlan is jealous of is that relationship—the way Joan calls Sherlock out as often as she makes allowances for him. It's probably too much to hope for—someone who knows him and likes him that way, the way friends do.

XXXX

"The last occupant of this cab carried a takeout of kung pao chicken," Sherlock says. "Or more likely, a take _home_ carton of leftovers after a meal at a restaurant."

The odor is subtle enough that Watson might have missed it—no shame in admitting her olfactory receptors are not as acute as his own, though he half expects her to object to his observation. Or perhaps her objection will be based on something else—that the information is extraneous to the task at hand, the kind of random observation he's learned, through hard knocks, not to share with his peers lest he be accused of showing off.

Or perhaps she wants to spend the entire cab ride to midtown scrolling silently through her phone, her shoulder hunched just enough to obscure the screen.

The cab ride from Brooklyn to 51st Street takes 31 minutes, only five minutes faster than the train would have been—and costs quadruple the price. Watson, however, had been insistent.

"I'm not walking to the station in this rain," she said as they stepped onto the brownstone stoop and scanned for the cab she'd ordered. Normally she isn't this fussy or extravagant, but tonight she's dressed in a form fitting black dress and Christian Louboutin pumps that elongate Watson's leg in a surprisingly pleasing silhouette…

Although Watson's sartorial choices are always interesting, tonight her formal attire is for his benefit—or rather, as a nod to the occasion. Dinner at Le Bernardin, a birthday gift requiring plenty of wrangling to get on the crowded reservations list. He'd objected at first—too expensive, too exclusive, a waste of time and energy—but Watson cut him off with "I'm going, with or without you," so naturally he'd had no real say.

The ride over Brooklyn Bridge is, as always, a spectacle, the dusky blue-gray of the East River punctuated by barges and pleasure boats trailing white ribbons of wake.

FDR Drive, on the other hand, is as adrenaline inducing as a vigorous single stick workout. Cars whip forward within touching distance of each other. The cabbie—like so many New York cabbies—is a thin man of indeterminate ethnicity, though he has his radio tuned to a popular Tunisian program. He's unflappable, darting his cab in and out of several lanes. Watson seems oblivious, consumed with her phone.

When the cab turns onto 51st Street, the traffic and the lights force a slowdown. With a sigh, Watson slips her phone into her purse.

"Far be it from me," Sherlock says, keeping his eyes straight ahead, "to school you on social manners, but you have been unusually preoccupied with your phone today."

A pedestrian darts in front of the cab and the cabbie throws his arm out the window and yells in the same dialect of Darija blaring from the radio.

Watson leans forward and says to the cabbie, "We'll get out at the corner."

They are still two blocks from the restaurant but Watson swipes her credit card on the meter and slides across the seat after Sherlock. A foolish decision to give up the cab this soon, one of those observations Sherlock is on the verge of articulating until two steps down the sidewalk, he feels Watson steady herself by looping her arm through his.

Perhaps not so foolish after all.

They don't speak again until they are safely inside the restaurant seated next to the wall where a decorative cascade of hammered metal rectangles are oddly evocative of the sea.

"Don't even bother to look," Watson says, pointing to the hefty book sized menu. "I'm ordering the tasting menu for us both. Don't argue."

"I never argue," Sherlock says—eliciting a raised eyebrow from Watson. "And I am not a complete philistine, Watson. If I do not often take time to indulge in gastronomic excesses, it is not because I do not appreciate fine cuisine when the opportunity arises. And this—" he says, raising his hand to indicate the quietly thrumming room, almost as many waiters as patrons in sight, "is cuisine at its finest."

After the waiter leaves with their order, Watson shifts in her seat for a moment and then rests her elbow on the table. "You're right," she says. "About being preoccupied. I've been trying to get in touch with my brother for several days but I think he's ignoring me."

"And Oren would do that why?"

"Remember when my mother thought he was cheating on Gabrielle and she asked me to talk to him? He's still mad about that. At me! Now my mother wants me to make sure he gets to her birthday party, but I can't if he won't answer his phone."

Two waiters are suddenly at the table placing small plates in front of them.

"An _amuse bouche_," one waiter says. Sherlock leans down, his nose inches from a thimble-sized bowl of green liquid, and sniffs.

"Leeks, garlic, fish stock, and something else," he says, peering up at the waiter. If the waiter is surprised, he doesn't show it. Watson, on the other hand, tilts her head as if she wants to say something.

"Dried kelp," the waiter intones. "Please enjoy."

A tiny spoon rests on the plate and Sherlock picks it up and examines it closely.

"Ivory," he says, though of course Watson can see that. She wrinkles her brow and gives him a jaundiced look.

More proof that not every observation needs to be spoken.

The soup is, for lack of a better word, exquisite. Sherlock weighs whether or not to comment, but this seems like the sort of expected social interaction that accompanies a normal meal, unlike their usual conversation over a bowl of cold cereal caught on the fly when they are in the middle of a murder investigation.

"A propitious start to dinner," Sherlock says. Watson nods.

"I wanted to do something special for your birthday," Watson says. "Don't frown at me. There's nothing wrong with celebrating a birthday."

"Hence your mother's insistence on it."

At once he's sorry he spoke. Watson's face falls. Before he can think of an appropriate response, the waiters are back to remove the plates.

"Your brother," Sherlock says, when they are again alone. "Have you told him to stop being unreasonable?"

"People don't become reasonable just because you tell them to!"

"I was hoping your brother was different from mine."

Watson's expression changes again—this time to frank sadness.

"I'm sorry I said that," Sherlock says. He is, too. Not that Mycroft shouldn't be talked about—and badly, for all that—but seeing Watson in pain is…painful. "I too often say things I shouldn't."

Watson looks up. "But you do it so well," she says wryly.

Fair enough.

"Your turn, then," Sherlock says as the waiters set down a single seared scallop and pour a brown sauce over it. He lowers his nose almost to the plate and takes a deep breath. Seaweed and bonito—classic dashi broth. "Have at me. Say something you shouldn't."

Watson picks up her spoon and takes a bite before answering.

"You're self-absorbed to a fault. You're inconsiderate. You're rude," she says, "even to your friends. Especially to your friends. Poor Harlan needed your help today and you bum-rushed him off just because you were in a bad mood."

"I was not in a _mood_," Sherlock says, objecting, "and he found the help he needed with you."

"You _were_ in a mood. All because of your birthday. What is it with you and your birthday? Hate to be reminded of your mortality?"

The scallops finished, the waiters whisk away the empty plates and replace them with tuna sashimi. Sherlock picks up his fork and waves it at Watson.

"Did you know that tuna is one fish so rarely infected with parasites that it is completely safe to eat raw?"

"Didn't know—didn't want to know," Watson mutters. "And you're avoiding answering my question. What's with you and birthdays?"

Sherlock slowly spears a slice of tuna and considers how much to tell Watson about the abysmal birthdays in his past—large gatherings of his father's friends drinking too much and posturing too broadly, excuses to do covert business deals under the guise of a party, the supposed guest of honor sitting lonely and ignored in a corner, a pile of useless gifts of squash racquets and Victorian novels beside him, Mycroft lurking around the edges of the room listening to the adult conversation, making a point of eating the Cadbury's bars sent by a maiden aunt in Dorset. Same gift every holiday—the sickly sweet chocolate more than Sherlock could bear, though Mycroft didn't know that.

And later, his father more than tipsy by the time the guests left, boxing Sherlock's ear for being sullen.

That, too, was the same every holiday—alcohol to excess and then abuse.

"Hard to say," Sherlock says at last. "I should take a page from Mary Watson's book and celebrate in future."

The rest of the meal is pleasant—good food made better by Watson's recounting humorous anecdotes about her own past birthdays. Unusual, this—the way she never tires him, never bores him, the way almost everyone else inevitably does. When the waiter brings the bill to Watson, Sherlock excuses himself to the gents but continues to an alcove at the end of the hall and takes out his phone.

Rain is still falling when they leave Le Bernardin and Sherlock steps to the curb and lifts his arm, the way Watson taught him. A cab pulls up almost immediately and they are on their way. As they head out of midtown, Watson pulls out her phone.

"I think you will find that you can get through now," Sherlock says. "I spoke to Oren a few minutes ago and set him right."

"You did what?"

"Called your brother. Told him he was being unreasonable."

"You didn't! Please tell me you are joking!"

"He agreed. Said he knows you two need to talk. He would have spoken to you earlier but I said we were out _celebrating_ my birthday."

He doesn't dare look Watson in the eye. Some observations need to be spoken—and some don't—and knowing which is which continues to baffle him. Perhaps he should have let her call Oren without any foreknowledge.

He darts a glance at Watson but her expression is unreadable.

"Earlier today," he says, "when Harlan indicated that he has been in communication with Kitty, I was, frankly, surprised. Two months and I've heard nothing from her, yet she's in touch with Harlan."

"She consulted him," Watson says, but he hears something like sorrow in her voice.

"No, it was more than that," he says. "I don't know when or how, but they have become friends. Friends, Watson. The way you and I are friends. The way I have tried to be your friend tonight."

A pressure on his forearm—Watson's hand giving him a squeeze—conferring absolution.

"Thank you," she says simply, and this time he looks at her directly. The tension she's carried for several days is gone, her carriage lighter, her posture more relaxed.

At the brownstone they go their separate ways—"I have to get out of these shoes!" she says as she heads upstairs—and Sherlock goes downstairs to the kitchen. There he puts on the kettle and dips his hand into his jacket pocket. A Cadbury's bar—slightly smushed from being mailed in an envelope—but intact. And with it a folded piece of paper with a phone number in Mycroft's tiny, precise handwriting.

Ripping open the candy, Sherlock takes an experimental lick. Cloying, as always. He tosses it into the wastebasket. After a moment, he balls up the paper and throws it in, too.

**A/N: Forgiveness has to be worth more than a single candy bar!**

**Thanks for reading. Thanks especially for reviewing!**


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